Nice… Love my KKR dividends… 12%…
Is it possible to get a topic split on this? Dave I appreciate you sharing this. This’ll definitely be something to follow. Can we find any links to open information about this?
I couldn’t find anything on the Mangrove deal, so whatever is out there is pretty well hidden away (which is possible since these are private companies). It is interesting that S. Hooks twitter posts about APR fell off a cliff in August compared to the past. Either he is super hyped about Auburn football and basketball, or something changed in related to APR.
http://arc-sos.state.al.us/cgi/corpdetail.mbr/detail?corp=662625&page=name&file=
Google the Tampa address as well as some of the new directors and you get Mangrove Equity.
http://www.mangroveequity.com/home.htm
Stephen is still a director but was removed as CEO on 8/20 and doesn’t control majority share in the company anymore. He also acknowledged that he is no longer CEO on Facebook today in the group Vag-tuning.
Either way, the point of my post is to highlight that what Arin says can’t be trusted. He will stall, obfuscate and outright lie in order to keep him and APR looking clean. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize that many people appreciate integrity and straight-forward answers.
As I indicated before, I’d be surprised if under new management this project will quickly receive the amount of capital spending required to push it to completion. S4 engines aren’t cheap, neither are quick cast supercharger manifolds and R&D. Who knows if the engines blew because of a Stage 3 defect, engine defect, or the idiot behind the wheel.
Perhaps some should read up on why equity partners are brought into a company. It’s not because everything is bright and cheerful.
Dave
Thanks for sharing the links, but I am having a hard time connecting the dots between Arin being an asshole and APR changing its LLC documentation.
Was the part about Arin being an asshole ever questioned? 
Yeah, I don’t think he is saying there is a connection. More that when there is a corporate shake-up like this, the front line people are either the most likely to stay or go depending on their situation (been through it twice myself as the Tech Support Manager…).
No, he got it right. lol
So everyone bow down to our new overlords in VAG tuning, Mangrove Equity Partners.
Prediction on new threads on AZ: “Thoughts on the new Mangrove Stage 2 Jungle Tune?”
This is an incredible about of information. I’d seriously suggest splitting this thread.
With these shakeups I wonder how this effects the actual company? The CEO stepping down and another company stepping in. Makes you wonder was this something planned for growth or pushed into because of unprecedented circumstance?
I think they just added another large amount of square footage to their building.
It effects every company differently depending on the circumstances. One thing you can count on is the private equity firm will examine where every last penny is spent, and the role of every employee. From there, it is anyone’s guess depending on what their plans are with the company. If they are only looking to quickly flip it, they’ll cut as many expenses as they can in the short-term. If it’s more of a long-term investment, they may look to increase R&D, Engineering, Production, etc. while balancing cost savings the best they can along the way.
More like, It’s best to believe it when it arrives instead of taking the word of a marketing guy. There have been plenty of instances where he rushes to post a pic of something they have in development saying “OMG, it’s going to be the best!” Then months later, he’ll say “nah didn’t make power, not worth doing”. If a competitor comes out with a similar teaser / product, he’s back with “didn’t work for us, therefore theirs won’t work”. (ex. 2.0 TSI /FSI intake manifolds).
Again, all marketing, no engineering. The engineering guys there are great and will tell you what works and what doesn’t. If only Arin had the same no-BS, straightforward attitude.
The lengths to which he’ll go to troll is pretty amazing as well. Finding a vid of a REVO distributor (who applied to be an APR distributor) playing with his kid, then screenshotting it and posting about it under an alias on vortex…
http://i.imgur.com/Gt8Fpkm.png
Dave
OMG THIS PLACE IS FULL OF APR FANBOIS… jk lol
This derailment is kind of on topic. This is an APR thread about stg3… and about how many motors APR have blown. During testing. Like others have said, fair play to them, isn’t that part of the testing?
… and this thread is exactly why you read every thread on AR. LOL
Very interesting!
IF he lives at 907 Harvard as the corporate docs indicate…I’d be shocked if he had a Miami house too lol.
As for what happened, who knows. I do know that APR is a pretty decent business and if they’re expanding like crazy, that is not without it’s difficulties.
JHM is a good example. They were a small 3 employee shop, and expanded pretty quickly in the late 2000s. They bought a new property to move to, and the cost of the transition basically doubled during the build/move/etc and really made the owner spit nails for a couple of years. It’s never easy. Now though they are a 10-12 employee business that does millions a year in revenue and want to grow again. It’s just the way it is. APR is already pretty huge, so I can imagine the snags and nightmares that come with a big expansion.
Arin acknowledged it
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/611346-Paging-GIAC-APR-regarding-2014-B8-5-Stage-II-Tune-Issues?p=10072886&viewfull=1#post10072886
[QUOTE=Arin@APR;10072886]I think there’s some confusion here. We’ve expanded massively recently. We added an additional 42,000 square feet to our facility for a total of 78,000 square feet and have purchased more machine and hired more engineers to bring more products in house. We’ve also opened a second R&D facility in Germany that operates with a full shop, and in house dynamometer. This requires a lot of equity up front to execute properly and our partners are helping make that possible. In doing so we’re looking to reduce time to market on several product lines (think 1 week, vs 2 weeks,) and provide far better customer service on the products we offer. The development schedule has not changed from where it was 6 months ago with the exception of adding more products as others are completed. Once everything’s fully up and running, and time to market’s reduced, we’ll be pumping out new products much faster.
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Lol. Someone should ask Arin how the new building will help product lead times…
Did APR ever announce that they were expanding.
Yes. Maybe 6-9 months ago? Before they actually started on the new building there was a big announcement.