Back in April, the German group net SE who is behind the Meyer Optik Görlitz, Emil Busch A.-G. Rathenau, Oprema Jena, C.P. Goerz, Ihagee Elbaflex and A. Schacht brands and several successful crowdfunding projects, has applied for de-listing from the German stock exchange. This de-listing was effective July 2nd. More information is available on their website (in German):
- net SE decides to completely delist (PDF file)
- The announcement of the Munich Stock Exchange (PDF file)
Now fast forward to July 17th when net SE filed for bankruptcy.
Dr. Stefan Immes, their CEO, is said by their PR to have had a car accident "a few weeks ago":
"Dear friends,
we have a rather sad message for you today. A few weeks ago, our main investor Stefan Immes and CEO of Net SE had a serious traffic accident, which he barely survived. Although we have been able to talk to him and although, for a very short time of the day he has become the astute, humorous and positive entrepreneur we know, it is now clear that due to the severity of the injuries he will not be able to continue running the company in the foreseeable future.
For a team as small as ours / For a company of 15 employees only, this entails a large number of changes. Currently, we are in the process of reorganization and are trying to establish a working system as no successor regulation can yet be found for the Net SE Group. For this reason, we are currently undergoing a restructuring process with an as yet unknown outcome for the individual divisions, such as CP Görz.
Especially as far as Crowdfunding is concerned, we think that we will need until the end of October to be able to share our conclusions on how to proceed. One of the top priorities of our Crowdfunding team is, of course, to deliver the orders we receive as promised. However, we ask for your understanding that, for legal reasons alone, we cannot make any faster decisions without having reorganized the company.
For technical questions, our support team is of course still available, but we can only make limited forecasts about the development progress of our projects.
We are honestly touched and the shock still sits deep. We are also extremely sorry that we are not able to spread better and more positive news at the moment, but we are working very hard to change this at short notice.
Yours sincerely, Net SE Crowdfunding team / team at Oprema Optik / the team at MOG"
The above post was published on some of the Kickstarter campaigns associated with the company - see here, here, here and here.
Update: a similar message was also posted on Indiegogo.
A very strange development. I am not keeping track of all the funding projects on Kickstarter for all the lenses, but I believe many of the lenses are not delivered to the backers. If you read the comments in the above Kickstarter links, there are several suggestions that this is fraud scheme. If you have any information on what is going on, you can contact me anonymously here.
Thanks Mistral75!
