One half of a two-person Denver company that creates skoolies, or buses converted into mobile homes, is accusing the other of stealing company funds and competing against it.
Chrome Yellow was founded in 2018 by Ben Jackson and Charlie Kern at a fabrication shop along Federal Boulevard after real estate prices drove Kern to build his own skoolie.
“We got the idea to start this business about three months after I built my first bus,” Kern recalled in a 2019 video. “We were already getting offers and propositions from other people.
“Without him, we wouldn’t be doing this,” he said of Jackson at the time. “He is the ‘we.’”
A full Chrome Yellow conversion cost between $55,000 and $95,000 in 2019, the company told The Denver Post that year. Its customers range from 20-ish entrepreneurs to retirees.
“I’m here to work on buses with the guys,” Jackson said then. “I was introduced to working on buses by being a cabinetmaker, but as time has gone on I’ve started to enjoy other aspects of the process. I get excited when clients want to experiment and do something new.”
Kern and Jackson are 50/50 owners of Chrome Yellow but Kern is its president and Jackson its vice president, “a role subordinate to Kern,” according to a lawsuit Jackson filed Nov. 17. Kern manages the company’s bank accounts, which Jackson says he cannot access.
During the pandemic, Chrome Yellow received a 30-year loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, providing it with $263,700 in working capital, according to Jackson.
“Sometime after securing the SBA loan proceeds, Kern began using them for (purposes) other than their designated purpose,” according to the lawsuit. “His use of the SBA loan proceeds included taking at least $28,000 of them for his own personal use.”
Jackson says he doesn’t know where the rest of the loan proceeds went and has not been able to receive an accounting but added that all of the SBA money has been spent.
The Chrome Yellow co-founder claims that his business partner has also started competing against their company by doing fabrication and consulting work as a side business.
Reached on Instagram, where 23,000 followers track his bus life, Kern declined to comment on the lawsuit. Through his lawyer, Jackson declined to discuss Chrome Yellow’s future.
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