I don't understand all the hate here….
I have personally bought three transmission kits from Keisler in the past years. Two TKO600 and and one SS700. They all worked well. When i had questions or needed perts i called and was always able to talk to the owner directly. They sent me replacement parts quickly and cost free !
Whenn my SS700 was taking a long time Shafi would tell me exactly what his problems are and was not bull****ting. Owning a manufacturing company myself the problems he told me sounded very familiar…in essence he tried to do too much for a company of his size and got overwhelmed by the problems and had not enough capital to sit it out. Now he is trying to reorganize the business and buy it back….i also had to sell to a larger company once and bought my company back a few years later…so i know they he is not doing this for fun. He will most likely have lost all his money in the process because the banks will have had him make a personal guarantee for the loans. He seems not to have the 600k to buy it back and tries to get a share for his knowledge and work he will put in.
Not an uncommon practice. He also seems to be willing to make sure all people who have prepaid for a tranny will get their money back or receive the tranny they had ordered. He would not have to do that although it seems to be a wise move to regain the trust of customers.
From a pure business perspective the only mistake her seems to make is to try to start again with very little money. 600k is nothing if you have to run a business of his size which involves huge stock etc. I would guess you would need at least another 2 million to be able to buy stock, restart the marketing and development and be able to sit out the slump that will follow the bankruptcy. It will take a while before trust is restored and sales all pick up again. Investment in the new products is vital because they will have to differentiate themselves from all the other TKO-kitmakers. The SS700 is a much better tranny and would get them a monopoly on a better solution which would have to be accompanied by a 6-speed, etc.
It would also be wise not to call the company Keisler and not to have Shafi as the marketing face of the company because he is the figure that people will associate with having caused the troubles….
I think if the company would be bought by a big name in the business lil the COMP-group or Edelbrock they could be a big success because that would eliminate all the doubts people would have about the sustainability of the company.
Just my 2 cents….
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