Letter from a Spikeball CEO about Brookline situation

This is an email that Spikeball Inc. CEO Chris Ruder sent an email to European roundnet communities in reaction to the statement of former European distributor - Brookline.nl. 

Mr. Ruder permitted me to publish this email.

Could this turmoil help Spikeball's direct competitors, such as Premier Spike or Rumble Roundnet? More information coming soon...

Enter Chris:

Hello leaders of European roundnet communities, IRF Board, USARoundnet board, and others,

I wanted to take a minute to share a bit on our decision to terminate our agreement with Brookline. To be clear, I wish we could have kept working together and completely understand the frustration of those of you that had good, personal relationships with them and those of you that are still owed money.  While I appreciate all that they did to help build the sport their presentation about what happened during our partnership is outright false.  I also vehemently disagree that they are bankrupt because of Spikeball. I’m hoping this note will give you all a better understanding of what happened.  And to those of you that reached out to ask questions and wanted to get a better understanding of what happened before jumping to conclusions, I thank you.  

They owe us about $1,500,000 and have for quite some time.  We spent months working with Brookline on order lead times and exploring adjustments to shipping and cancellation windows. Those dates came and went without action. Spikeball had to pay our factories for that inventory and without payment from Brookline we were financially inhibited ourselves. We had our own layoffs and financial pressures that we take responsibility for.  We explored and instituted multiple ways to help Brookline with the inventory glut.  This eventually resulted in coming up with a mutually agreed upon payment plan extended over a lengthy period of time.  Debt payments came to us, and then eventually sputtered and then completely stopped. They constantly struggled to find money to order new product.  Promises of payments were constantly broken. This went on for a good portion of 2023.  We could continue to work with a company that isn’t able to bring our product to the market and can’t pay its debt or we could explore other distribution solutions. We chose the latter.

We did everything we could to avoid them heading into bankruptcy.  I wish no ill will on them and we offered several settlement agreements, including an offer to waive the entire debt.  Let me repeat that, we offered to forgive 100% of the $1,500,000 debt allowing them to avoid bankruptcy and it was turned down.  I’d also like to point out that they sold and (I believe) were paid for all of the inventory for that $1,500,000 and yet we never got paid for it. 

In their post, Brookline wrote how our decision to find a new distributor was based on wanting improved margins, more money, and wanting to sell our business.  They went on to say we hired a CFO to prepare the business to be sold.  There is not an ounce of truth to any of that.  We had a partner that couldn’t pay its debts and couldn’t afford to bring enough inventory to satisfy the marketplace.  Retail stores across Europe had no inventory and couldn’t get Spikeball sets.  It’s that simple.  

Added from the second email from Chris: "I'd like to share two points that I should have made clearer in my initial post.

1. There is and never was any contractual agreement for us to take back the goods. We never committed to that.  We agreed to try and help our partner. "

2. There was no conspiracy or grand plan as Brookline indicates.  I can't speak for Erwin's actions as he is not my employee.

Even with all of these challenges, Spikeball Inc continues to invest in the development of the sport all over the world, but especially Europe.  The decision to work with a new distributor has dramatically increased our ability to continue to support the sport and the broader community. We have been committed to growing this sport for over 15 years and share the same goal as all of you which is to make the sport massive.  We’ve turned down numerous opportunities to ‘cash out’ and have been called crazy for continuing to invest in our vision.  No company or organization has spent anywhere near the amount of money, time and human resources as we have to build the community and sport.  I am so incredibly proud of that.  We remain steadfast in our commitment to Worlds ’24, the EURA and our work with clubs, tournament directors and players in Europe and all over the world.

If you have any questions, I can be reached at [email protected].

Thank you,

Chris Ruder

CEO Spikeball Inc.

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You can share your opinion on the free European Roundnet Discord Server.