Vinyl Me, Please, the once-thriving Denver subscription service that is suing its former executives for allegedly wasting company funds on a record plant, has been sold.
VNYL Inc., a St. Louis company that owns similar subscription services, announced Tuesday that it had acquired Vinyl Me, Please on May 27 for an undisclosed price.
“We have big plans to grow this community and welcome a new generation of collectors,” VNYL CEO Nick Alt was quoted in a news release about the sale, which was first reported by Variety. “But first, we have to do right by the customers who built it. That means making things right, listening closely and proving — through action — that VMP is still worth believing in.”
Vinyl Me, Please has been criticized by customers in recent months for slow delivery times. The company has apologized at times and said it was restructuring its business.
VMP was founded in 2012 and thrived amid a national revival of vinyl. But Rich Kylberg, a Harvard graduate and chief strategy officer at VMP until his firing last spring, has claimed in court that the company was struggling with stagnant revenue by 2019. Vinyl Me, Please burned through $3 million in investor capital and lost $1 million in 2020, he says.
Kylberg was fired alongside CEO Cameron Schaefer and Chief Financial Officer Adam Block for starting Vinyl Media Pressing, a 14,000-square-foot plant in RiNo. Vinyl Me, Please claims they used company funds on the venture, which was independently owned by the trio.
The fired executives are countersuing Vinyl Me, Please for unpaid compensation and claim they were let go to save on severance. A three-day trial is scheduled for mid-December.
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, VNYL’s acquisition has on that case. In its news release, the new owner says it is focused on rebuilding the trust of customers.
“Vinyl customers deserve a white-glove experience, and that’s far from what they’ve gotten recently,” said Emily Muhoberac, the new president of Vinyl Me, Please. “We intend to do that by getting back to the fundamentals of VMP with a great customer experience.”
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