Holy out of control thread! Ben with Spike here. I haven't been on HBT in years. Glad the forum is still around! Thanks to whoever tagged us so we go notified.
LOTS of misinformation being spread here mainly by Joe (wickedbeernut). I'll try to give some clarity but I'll monitor this thread for a few days so people can ask questions and get actual information.
Ben Story
About 3 years ago I took a step back from the day to day and gave the keys to our leadership team to run. I moved to Texas and started another company. That's been my main focus recently. There have been huge issues with out of stock products, long lead times, quality issues, delayed product launches, etc, etc. In Oct 2024 I decided the only way to right the ship was to jump back in the day to day. It's been a lot of 12hr+ days over the last few months but I can confidently say that we are caught up and better than ever. Orders are going out mostly same day. If you look at our site there is currently one product out of stock (CF5 heater). We track quality as a % by each product line and we only have 5 total part numbers with a replacement rate over 2% (our action threshold). 5 is the lowest it's been in a LONG time. Customer service tickets are also down massively. Things are just running insanely smoothly and better than they ever have.
Layoffs
I decided to let about 5 people go in late 2024. Home brewing is down about 70% and commercial is down about 90%. We're mainly home brewing but either way it doesn't make sense to have 3 welders on staff when 1 works; simple math. At one point we had 5 people in Engineering. However that was when we spent about $2m in R&D developing the All-In-One PRV, Solo Panel, Flow Pump, Grain Mill, Counterflow Chiller, Mill, Solo and Trio tables, and probably another half dozen I'm forgetting. There isn't a need for 5 engineers now that all those projects are done and at steady state. This goes department by department. We just don't need 3 people in a department anymore when 1 person or even 1 part time person can handle it.
Current Staff
It was mentioned we only have 6 people or something like that. I wish we could operate that lean. For staff/in house people, we have about 6 full time. However that doesn't count the other 10 people that are part time, contract, remote, etc. We have 4 contract welders alone that help with all the welding. The fact that Joe is poking at my Dad coming in to work with his son and help out just shows the character that he has. It's really sad and disgusting.
Facebook User Group Bans
I've seen multiple places that we are banning people and we are controlling the Spike User Group. I'd recommend you reach out to Brandon Starkey who is the main Admin of the group who has no affiliation with Spike. The decision was made to start banning detractors from the group. This was not a Spike decision or order. The group is suppose to be a positive place to discuss brewing beer. A few people,
who stated they will never buy Spike again, decided that they were going to comment negatively on every single post that ever got brought up. The group started to get hostile and just overall negative. Those detractors can go complain else where (thus this thread being created).
State of Homebrewing
Like I mentioned, home brewing is down about 70%. Nobody (relative to previous years) is brewing beer, buying equipment or even patronizing craft breweries. We've seen more breweries closing than opening. Our main competitors are Blichmann and Ss and I wouldn't be surprised if one or both go under in 2025. Ss was bought for their commercial side. That has pretty much gone to 0 and Middleby is rolling that brand into Deutsche Equipment. Wouldn't be surprised if they shut the home brew arm down. Blichmann is in the same boat from my POV. They hasn't really been any innovation on the home side and they've really pivoted to the commercial side over the last few years. Well, that side is completely dried up and now you have all that overhead to maintain. We'll see what happens with them...
On the other hand, I saw this trend coming years ago. We were about 30% done with a new fame mounted 3bbl system and I killed it because I saw that nobody was going commercial especially with the interest rates the way they are. We have cut our head count from over 25 full time people during Covid to about 6 full time and the 10+ contract people that we can flex up or down as demand is needed. Basically, if there is a brand that is going under I'm 100% confident it won't be us. Our financials are super healthy, our balance sheet is even healthier and we have $1m+ in inventory.
Glycol Chiller
No beating around the bush... this was a failed product launch. The leaking issue was terrible and has plagued us up until recently. Luckily about 2mo ago we found a really solid fix. We reinforced the joints with an epoxy joint and then Flexseal over that. The epoxy adds strength and the Flexseal absorbs any impacts during shipping. Since we started shipping units like this I think we've had 1 leaker (and this is out of 100s of units). The units in the Bargain Cave are units that we've received back that were leakers. We've cleaned them up and sealing them using the new technique. Joe keeps posting the prototype welded tanks (which I sent in confidentially so I'm assuming he'll be getting a nice letter from our attorney soon...) however this is just a prototype. Best case scenario if everything passes my testing is these will be in house in late 2025. If you'd like to wait until then, go ahead! However, the units going out don't leak and won't leak. The tank design provides no functional differences to the end user so I'm not sure why it's such a big deal to some people. We stand behind all of our equipment (even the Bargain Cave Chillers we're selling).
Again, lots of misinformation from people with too much time on their hands. If you don't want to buy from us then don't; it's a free country. But not sure why some people want to make it there life's mission to try and talk negatively about a small company filled with really hard working dedicated employees. Soon enough we'll be the only home brew brand around so don't burn your bridge

In the meantime if people want to have a cordial convo I'm happy to answer questions!