Several days ago I learned that some people who had pre-ordered Honeycomb hardware, namely their Charlie yoke system, had not yet received their product and after months of waiting had begun to grow restless. Comments on their Discord community seemed to indicate that something was up but that they couldn’t say exactly what was happening just yet. Well now the story has come out directly from Honeycomb found Nicki Repenning. Here’s what we learned.

Business deals gone bad

The story of what happened to Honeycomb is a long one and the message, written out in full on the Honeycomb Facebook, on Reddit in various communities and elsewhere is worth reading in full if you’re one of those affected by what has happened.

The shortened version of the story, which I don’t think I can do full justice to, is basically a business deal that has gone bad with one of the Honeycomb’s earliest backers. It has left Honeycomb and Nicki in a troublesome though hopefully not fatal spot. Here’s part of what he had to say:

During the first two years, I focused almost entirely on product development and during this time, I did not suspect anything wrong when reviewing the monthly and annual financial reports. Sales were great, and I had no expectations that we would be profitable from day one. However, by mid-2022, it became apparent that my business partner was in financial trouble and when Honeycomb ended up with a negative result despite having a record year, I started looking into the financials in detail. Once I started going through the books, every invoice and purchase order, one by one, I discovered that the service fees added to the factory cost (for the services provided in Hong Kong) were significantly higher than what we had agreed. In addition, the sales prices on the invoices to my partner’s distribution companies were lower than agreed. When I confronted my business partner about the findings, he assured me that it was just an accounting error and promised to get the books in order.

Nicki Repenning

Unfortunately, the story takes a turn for the worse as the issues went well beyond an accounting error.

I accepted the explanation and solution but didn’t push to have it done immediately, not wanting to worsen my partner’s financial situation at the time. To further help the cash flow situation, I made the mistake of agreeing to a limited pre-order campaign for the Charlie’s once the production schedule had been confirmed by the factory. However, when production was set to begin, I found out that instead of paying for the components required to manufacture the product, all the money received for the Charlie pre-order had gone elsewhere. The situation escalated in July 2023, shortly after we missed the planned shipping date for the pre-orders when the factory partner contacted me directly to inform me that they had still not received payment for the Charlie production or for the several thousand Alpha and Bravo’s they had manufactured and were sitting in their warehouse, which I was completely unaware of existed. Additionally, they had a significant amount of outstanding invoices, including for the injection tooling, required to produce the plastic parts for the Charlie. The extent of the situation caught me completely by surprise.

Nicki Repenning

The story goes on from there but its safe to say that, caught unaware and in a difficult financial situation, Nicki has been working to try and make things right with the factory and to try and essentially extricate the company and inventory and a former business partner.

Right now, they are looking for a new partner to buy the old partner out.

The one good news is that we have reached an agreement, that he will sell his assets in Honeycomb if I can find a new partner to buy him out. That’s where I’m currently at…

Nicki Repenning

With luck, the hardware company can find a way forward and Nicki’s comments at the end speak of a desire to continue the company by any way that he can find to go forward. There’s talk of lessons learned and some of the successes that Honeycomb have seen.

Again, I don’t think I can do the full story justice as there is nuance to the whole of the tale but hopefully I have provided a sufficient summary for readers wanting to know the basics. Read the full story on their Facebook page.

Hopes for the future?

Honeycomb has produced some well regarded parts with their Alpha yoke and Bravo throttle quadrant being talked about semi-frequently in the community.

I briefly had a chance to go hands on with some early models at FSExpo back in 2019 and I came away impressed with what they had. Recently I had even considered looking into one of their products for future use and review.

I hope Honeycomb can find a way forward. They are a hardware maker in a niche market but their products have attracted plenty of attention and the company has built up a fair bit of goodwill, recent silence notwithstanding, so I hope things go well and that they can find a way forward.