The insolvent Dutch bicycle manufacturer Van Moof has found a new owner. Lavoie, subsidiary of Formula 1 supplier McLaren Applied and provider of electric scooters, announced the acquisition on Thursday. The company did not initially name a purchase price. However, McLaren Applied CEO Nick Fry put the investment sum, including fresh money to stabilize and expand the business, at “several tens of millions of pounds in the short term”.
“This is a great opportunity for us because Van Moof is a company with a great product,” added Fry. However, the company got itself into a difficult financial situation – the coming months would not be easy. It is now a matter of “bringing stability to Van Moof’s operations” and expanding the e-mobility business, said Lavoie Managing Director Eliott Wertheimer. “Van Moof has 190,000 customers worldwide and our goal is to keep those drivers on the road.”
Van Moof filed for bankruptcy in mid-July. Complaints had been piling up on social media for the past few weeks. Many customers complained about long delivery times for bikes that had already been paid for a long time ago. Eventually, the company ran into problems repaying investor loans and was forced to close its branches.
The e-bike manufacturer had previously benefited enormously from the boom in electric bicycles. Van Moof quickly spread abroad. But financial success simply did not come. In 2021, the company posted a loss of around 80 million euros.
The brothers Taco and Ties Carlier founded Van Moof in 2009 and wanted to equip cities around the world with the “ideal city bike”. The minimalist Van Moof bikes have received several international awards for their design. Technical innovations were also initially highly praised. VanMoof promised the bikes were almost impossible to steal with a digital lock, built-in alarm and GPS.
Technical defects, long delivery times and waiting times for repairs finally meant the end for the company from Amsterdam. The main problem was that Van Moof wanted to keep everything in-house – including the manufacture of spare parts and repairs. That was too much for the small company. Now it remains to be seen how the McLaren subsidiary Lavoie will reorganize operations – and make them more efficient.