Whats up with Ecklers

quickchange

quickchange

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Im told they shut their upholstery side down but have e mailed every listed e mail wih no reply on any , always dealt with Jon for 40 years but not getting any replies , Have they gone **** up ?? even tried to order on line , no go, Not asking for negative comments, I actually have had great service from them , Any problem Jon fixed it, They certainly went down hill when Ecklers took over from Mac,s ,Was handy as a dealer to be able to combine V8 parts with A orders , Some one there must know whats up ?? Derek in a hot NZ
 
Eckler's is no more. The company that is purchasing the holdings doesn't seem to have much interest in the early cars but time will tell. The rumor is that Cartouche is up for sale. Classtique is now the only source for model A upholstery kits.
 
Eckler's was indeed sold last month to a company called turn5 out of the Philadelphia PA area. the new owners have indeed closed the Cartouche division down and all employees were let go at that time. I also know that a bunch of others were let go from other divisions as well including Jon. At this point and time i really have no idea who is left over there or what the future holds.
 
rotorwrench said:
Eckler's is no more. The company that is purchasing the holdings doesn't seem to have much interest in the early cars but time will tell. The rumor is that Cartouche is up for sale. Classtique is now the only source for model A upholstery kits.
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Wow, didn't Cartouche/MAC's recently buy what was left of LaBarron-Bonney? Wonder what is going to happen to all of the patterns and such.
 
GPierce said:
Does not look like antique cars are in their future. Have to wonder why they bought Echlers.
https://www.turn5.com/
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I saw it start in early 80 with "corporate raiders" of several of my customers and for 15 years after this.

Most likely the only thing that they care about is money they can make by stealing the company assets.

It is very doubtful that they even know what a Model A is.

In one case they came in and installed themselves as "officers" of a very large company at $1 million a year. The wife and son and his wife and one other relative each one was stealing $1 million a year from the $5 million dollars from the employee pension fund of one of the small branches of the company.

In a year the fund was gone.

This guy was very famous as "Master of Hostile Takeovers" for doing this to many other companies over more that 30 years.

Many of these people hold MBAs "masters in bean accounting" ..

I am not saying that all MBAs are jerks but these and the ones that later took over our company certainly were jerks.

All that the bean counters cared about was that their pile of beans was bigger than anybody else's.
 
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Update finally got replies from them & yes been sold , Not shipping international now , Staff gone , they will ship internally mean time, Lets hope they infact keep supplying old car parts , competition is good for all , Phone calls for us not easy as we are a day ahead of them , 1st to get the sun ? So if it does not rise one morning we can let you know & it gives you 20 odd hours to fix it , sounds good to me , Summer time here, so maybe we are 6 months ahead ???
 
Ecklers sold all kinds of other brand of automotive parts. Foreign and domestic. Corvette, Mustang, F100s, Bronco, Mercedes....on and on.

Turn5 did not purchase Ecklers for Model A or Early V8 products. They have no interest in our cars. They are an online E-commerce outfit that is interested in F100s, Broncos mostly the lifted and modified variety. They see the stupid prices that folks are spending on an early Bronco purchase and want to join in on that trend. A trend is what it is. Turn 5 is full of young (I'm 42) computer and marketing people that don't know what a Model A or V8 Ford is and they don't care. They couldn't check the oil in their Honda Civic. Here is the proof https://www.turn5.com/#brands

It's not the end of the world. It does create an opportunity for someone to fill the gap. Although the expense of making some of the parts Ecklers did or any of the parts now days is prohibitive.

JAK is correct all of the Cartouche folks were let go and many on the Ecklers side of the parts business is gone. The original patterns that Cartouche had, no idea. My fear is the friendly folks at Turn5 will trash them all.
 
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Benson said:
I saw it start in early 80 with "corporate raiders" of several of my customers and for 15 years after this.

Most likely the only thing that they care about is money they can make by ****** the company assets.

It is very doubtful that they even know what a Model A is.

In one case they came in and installed themselves as "officers" of a very large company at $1 million a year. The wife and son and his wife and one other relative each one was stealing $1 million a year from the $5 million dollars from the employee pension fund of one of the small branches of the company.

In a year the fund was gone.

This guy was a very famous as "Master of Hostile Takeovers" for doing this to many other companies over more that 30 years.

Many of these people hold MBAs "masters in bean accounting" ..

I am not saying that all MBAs are jerks but these and the ones that later took over our company certainly were jerks.

All that the bean counters cared about was that their pile of beans was bigger than anybody else's.
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In my opinion this is why employees should have filed a class action law suit especially when employees pension fund is involved. How do I know? I once worked for a company that shut down and liquidated all of their assets. The president was using pension funds and assets to feed the presidents pocket. In the end the law suit awarded funds to the employees and were distributed accordingly. Granted the attorneys charged a fee, it was better than a poke in the eye for the employees.
 
Dennis in Illinois, the politicians are the ones who raid the pension funds!

Two governors back that dude cleaned out the Teacher's Retirement System for who knows what, whatever politicians like to waste your money on. Usually themselves.

TRS was solvent making more $$ than they spent on paying the teacher's pensions. That all got turned on it's ear.

Fast forward to today the TRS is back and strong again all they have to do now is keep the politician wolves away:o

So in answer to the original post, I too am hoping this will have a good ending.
 
Jeff, sorry to hear about what happened in Illinois. My sister-in-law was a teacher for over 30 yrs. Unfortunately she received very little before she died. Their health insurance was just as bad as they didn’t kick in until 6 months after she had a stroke. I think she got one month payment after that.
 
Ecklers didn't make anything, or at least directly, but borrow - steal - rebrand and repackage someone else's products & or services.
I personally worked for them for "17" years and in the end it took me over 2 years to settle up and collect the 10+k they were into me for.
These last few years were spent working indirectly for Ecklers through a 3rd party,
Danny Howell of S.E. Chevy parts. Ecklers rebranded my parts and services as being done
In house by their own restoration service department. It's not a complaint, just that I was glad to be away from them and their practices.
Bert's, Bratton, Snyders will all benefit and pick up some of the slack left by the loss of Macs and I do wish them all the best. In the end, customer service will always win out and just those 3 I first mentioned have their reputations backed by their customer service ! ��
 
funny you folks mention lawsuits........

who pays when all of the funds are gone?

Im thinking thats a waste of time and lawyers fees......

my experience with rentals and tenants not paying.
 
Frankly I say good riddance. Their parts could be pretty bad quality anyways. Support the smaller businesses who actually care about their customers and make decent products.
 
chrs1961815 said:
Frankly I say good riddance. Their parts could be pretty bad quality anyways. Support the smaller businesses who actually care about their customers and make decent products.
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They did make a few items no one else produced (1935-1936 transmission mounts) and others. They also owned Cartouche, the only place left that sold early V8 upholstery kits. It's not the end of times, however the V8 guys like me needed a few of their products. These kids at Turn5 are the worst.
 
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