It has been a little more than two months since Tony Reidy posted his Open Letter to Wai Kee Hui on The Miniatures Page website. I was aware of this "letter" at the time of posting and although I was annoyed at his unprofessional tone and angered at what amounted to many outright lies, I decided that my best course of action was to stay out of online politics and instead focus on trying to get the company I had recently become majority shareholder of into functional order.
The past two months have been extremely busy with trying to figure out what orders had been placed and paid for before I took over, inventorying product that was still in stock at Triangle, and setting up a new order platform and shipping facility. These goals have now been accomplished, with all outstanding orders shipped and our webstore reopened.
Throughout this process I was cognizant of the defamation of character my associates and I were receiving in cyberspace at the hands of Tony Reidy and Howard Whitehouse. Even though at many times the temptation was strong for me to jump in and tell my side of the story, I refrained from doing so while we were struggling to put Wargames Factory back on track. Now that we are on the road to recovery, and in lieu of increasingly slanderous postings being made by Tony and Howard, I feel the time has come for me to set the record straight.
I became majority shareholder of Wargames Factory along with all its intellectual properties on October 13th, 2010. This acquisition occurred because over the course of the previous two years, Tony Reidy had run up a bill of more than $250,000 USD with my manufacturing company in China and had failed to make a single payment on his bill during this time. Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not an immensely wealthy man, and this is a huge sum of money to me. When it became evident that Tony was unable and unwilling to pay his debt to me, I had to consider my options. Option 1 was that I cease making product for Tony and call in the debt I was owed, which would effectively put Wargames Factory out of business. Option 2 was that I assume 51% ownership of Wargames Factory in return for the $250,000 USD I was owed. The intention behind option 2 was that I would gain controlling interest and help manage the company into some sort of financial health, where I might be able to recoup the monies owed me as well as make money for the rest of the shareholders. When both options were presented to Tony Reidy, he chose option 2 and signed the paperwork transferring majority ownership to me on October 13th, 2010.
What occurred next is that Tony Reidy felt he should still be able to continue to manage Wargames Factory as he saw fit, with my only input being to proceed to produce product as before. This was not a scenario I was comfortable with, for obvious reasons. As a point of fact, before I signed the paperwork transferring the 51%, we had a forensic accountant look at the company's financial health and it was discovered that the company had been running in the red for its entire existence under the management of Tony. While Tony is passionate about wargaming and the wargaming community, it was clear that he was completely unsuited to running this business. It was evident that for Wargames Factory to have any chance of financial success, it would need to have a new business model.
The months following my acquisition of majority stock were rocky and tumultuous as I attempted to form some sort of working relationship with Tony Reidy. Many months were spent trying to get Tony to release access to the webstore, company records, and company bank accounts so that I could start to get a picture of what we were dealing with. In addition to the constant struggle to simply gain information regarding the company I now owned 51% of, more and more vendors and individuals started coming out of the woodwork claiming that Tony Reidy/Wargames Factory owed them money and they had never been paid.
I need to make something very clear. The agreement that Tony and I signed has a clause that states that he had fully apprised me of all debts the company owed before I became majority stockholder, and that any debts not disclosed were the responsibility of Tony, not Wargames Factory. I will not go into the long list of debts to both vendors and individuals undisclosed by Tony that have come to light over the past five months, but I am going to tell you about one specific debt.
When I took over the company I decided that we would need to move our operations and shipping out of the Boston area. This decision was based on the fact that my associates are based in the western United States, and it made the most sense for our new business model to relocate there. When we told Triangle that we would regrettably be moving our shipping operations elsewhere, they informed us that before we could remove the Wargames Factory merchandise from their facility, I would need to pay them the $5,000 USD that was owed to them for back salaries for their disabled shipping employees. This came as a big surprise to me, especially when I asked for a copy of their bill and discovered that Tony Reidy had not made a payment to the employees of Triangle for almost two years. In light of Tony and Howard's recent posts claiming I cheated Triangle out of their money, I find myself most dishonored by this blatant lie.
There is not enough time for me to address all of the accusations and falsehoods about the new Wargames Factory team that have spun out of control over the internet for the past months, but I feel that I needed to shed a little light on what has actually transpired behind the scenes. For everyone's information, between the $250,000 USD I was initially owed by Wargames Factory and the amount of money I have put into the company over the past five months to keep it afloat and get it back on its feet, it will be a long time before I possibly see any return on my investments. I am not a villainous, foreign millionaire doing a shady hostile takeover of a poor American company to make a fast buck. I am simply a business man who is making the best I can out of the difficult situation that is in front of me.
With that out of the way, I want to let you know that while I am new to the wargaming world, I am dedicated to providing the highest quality and most innovative product in the market and to listening to how you, our valued customers, would like to see Wargames Factory evolve. I thank you all for your patience during what was a very rocky transition. and look forward to smoother sailing ahead.