Apple Reseller 'Simply Mac' Shuts Down

[GripnSip]

Wow that’s awful for the employees but Apple shaft resellers.

I worked for SM for 3 years, and the day my store closed in 2016 was the single best day of my entire life. I'm not exaggerating. I mean that quite literally. After I got laid off, I woke up the next morning and played air guitar in my bathrobe for like an hour.

Apple shafts AASPs and resellers, yes, but SM did a lot to themselves. Terrible company, terrible business model, treated me and my coworkers like dirt. Overspent on mall locations, so just to break even on rent we had to make $15k a month in gross profit. AT&T exclusive in an area where AT&T had garbage service so we got no new phone sales a month. Found out they were opening a new location in my hometown in a dead mall. Tried to warn them. Sent a dozen e-mails. They did it anyway. Paid an ungodly high rent because the "foot traffic numbers were better." Failed in a year.

It wasn't so bad when it was independent but then it got bought out by Gamestop after I worked there for like 3 months and it went down hill. It kept getting worse and worse. My numbers got better and better, I got all sorts of award from Apple directly--I had by both Apple and SM's metrics some of the best numbers in the company. They refused to promote me, gave me a bogus write-up (while I was on the one paid vacation I would take a year)...

I ran the service department. Needed to work M-F to so I could see to it that all orders were placed in a timely fashion to keep devices turned around as fast as possible. I was given no other technicians so I did everything. The morons in charge decided I needed to spend more time selling (instead of fixing, which was, you know, my job) and that I needed to have one day off during the work week and one day off during the weekend. Not tenable. Took me off of salary and put me on a meager hourly wage. I even earned special Premium Service Provider shirts from Apple every year I worked there and they wouldn't let me wear them.

Anyway, got a much better job immediately after making twice as much with a thousand times better benefits, both normal and fringe, and ended up making so much I was able to go to law school without taking on a penny's worth of debt.

Sorry, I'm excited, I am so glad to see SM fail. Had to register for an account just to post this. Don't feel bad for the employees. This is good for them. It is an all-around toxic company and its demise should be applauded. Just graduated, so I need to pass the bar, otherwise, I wouldn't mind having my first victim be SM on behalf of the employees they're screwing.

 

[GripnSip]

GameStop Expanding Beyond Video Games with Aggressive Growth Plans for 'Simply Mac' Stores

Major video game retailer GameStop is making a significant push to broaden its business, expanding its retail operations with new brands and stores...

www.macrumors.com

Multiple Simply Mac Stores Shutting Down Across the U.S.

Simply Mac, a well-known Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider owned by GameStop, is shutting down a number of its brick and mortar stores...

www.macrumors.com

Apple Resellers and Service Providers Speak Out Following Simply Mac Closures

GameStop last week announced it is closing a number of non-productive Simply Mac locations throughout the United States, less than four years after...

www.macrumors.com

Some of these started as Peach Mac stores until GameStop bought them out in 2012-2013 and rebranded them as Simply Mac.

GameStop had a heavy hand in running it into the ground until they sold it in 2019.

Yep. The location featured in the thumbnail of the first article was my location. It is also one of the stores shut down in the second article.

Good riddance.

 

[nostresshere]

The comment about Wuhan was just uncalled for.

WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THE WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC. And we call it covid or pandemic. Stop being a sheep.

 

[plprofessionals]

 

[plprofessionals]

they never planned on paying anyone, and lied to hundreds of employees while they helped empty some stores and put the remainder in nearby storage units

 

[Abazigal]

If your country has an official Apple store, I really see no reason to buy from third party retailers. The Apple store will always get stock of new products on day 1, they do online delivery and have a 2-week return policy.

 

[tominco]

So the employees won't be paid, but what about the customers whose stuff had been dropped off for repair? How/when will they get their things back?

I visited a Simply Mac a few times to inquire about repair. Every time I was told, we can't do that, and will ship it off to Apple to be fixed. I could have arranged that will Apple over chat or the phone. They never provided anything special, and my local store closed years ago.

 

[JDSeig01]

I worked there for a year at the Lawrence, KS location, we were a store that opened in 2020. Worked as an operations manager, and I could tell you first hand it wasn't the fault of the pandemic. Inventory was not distributed to the correct stores, and investment in EV products are what destroyed Simply Mac. The managers have worked, including myself, 35-85 hours and will NOT be getting paid for their labor.

Simply Mac was taken over by Reiner Voigt in 2016, and upon arrival, had fired the purchasing team (this was said from an accountant in a group we formed after termination). Andrew Defrancesco was appointed the head of the purchasing as a sole representative. Andrew Defranceso is also an investor in EV TOYS, and is the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC (Subsidiary to SOL Global Investments Corp).. These details will matter in a moment.

These are the Chairmen of the company, the chairmen had claimed to be a full board representation to General Managers and even regional managers. In order to be a chairman, you had to invest (statement via Simply Mac SEC Annual Report) in the company. The numbers next to each name is a chair representative, meaning that 3 men represented multiple chairmen positions.

These were the payouts of 2021 to the Chairmen, they had claimed lackluster sales during the holiday seasons. My store did not have sufficient inventory to sell what we needed on those holidays.

And the executives, another reason for their claims of bankruptcy was inadequate funding from an investor (they had told us this during company meetings). The investors were the chairmen themselves.

Note their names, Reiner Voigt, Kevin Taylor, and aforementioned Andrew DeFrancesco.

As Chairmen they had made decisions to generate convertible notes and warrants to SOL Global Investments Corp and SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC. All throughout 2021. Convertible loans allow short-term debts to be turned into cash equity.

SOL Global Investment Group is ran by Kevin Taylor. Andrew DeFrancesco--the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC--was the individual who put Simply Mac in a position to sell EV products for his own personal financial gain.

Here is proof of Andrew

These men are thieves, liars, and scum. They have jeopardized the lives of over 350 employees, and have displaced 99% of them within 6 months. They funneled the remaining funds into their subsidiary companies SOL Global and SOL Verano--all of 2021--squeezing Simply Mac dry before filing Bankruptcy. A month ago they told us we were restructuring, and without warning we were all terminated and will not be paid for a months worth of labor. We have to file claims with the bankruptcy court which could take months.

Our store was filled with thousands of dollars in inventory, but was never purchased and was never allocated to stores that sold those products. Ex, We had over 60 adapters worth 50$, but only sold 2 a month. Hundreds of cases that were never bought.. EV products were eventually allocated after months of them not being sold.

Apple put holds on repairs we commenced for customers, some are sitting unfinished in my store as I'm typing this. Along with finished ones that won't be released until things clear up. They continuously fired and consolidated district and regional positions to line their pockets. All Operations coordinators, regional managers and directors, all bounced from the Gmail without saying a word to the lower end employees. They are most likely all still getting paid.

These people have ruined the security of hundreds, and they deserve to be held accountable. All my claims derive from the aforementioned SEC report and personal investigation.

 

[Gk200062YVR]

I worked there for a year at the Lawrence, KS location, we were a store that opened in 2020. Worked as an operations manager, and I could tell you first hand it wasn't the fault of the pandemic. Inventory was not distributed to the correct stores, and investment in EV products are what destroyed Simply Mac. The managers have worked, including myself, 35-85 hours and will NOT be getting paid for their labor.

Simply Mac was taken over by Reiner Voigt in 2016, and upon arrival had fired the purchasing team (this was said from an accountant in a group we formed after termination). Andrew Defrancesco was appointed the head of the purchasing as a sole representative. Andrew Defranceso is also an investor in EV TOYS, and is the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC (Subsidiary to SOL Global Investments Corp).. These details will matter in a moment.

These are the Chairmen of the company, the chairmen had claimed to be a full board representation to General Managers and even regional managers. In order to be a chairman, you had to invest (via Simply Mac SEC Annual Report) in the company. The numbers next to each name is a chair representative, meaning that 3 men represented multiple chairmen positions.

View attachment 2016914

These were the payouts of 2021 to the Chairmen, they had claimed lackluster sales during the holiday seasons. My store did not have sufficient inventory to sell what we needed on those holidays.
View attachment 2016915

And the executives, another reason for their claims of bankruptcy was inadequate funding from an investor (they had told us this during company meetings). They had consolidated their debt from nearly 50m down to 14m in a 6 year process, this reasoning is false and the SEC report says otherwise.
View attachment 2016916

Note their names, Reiner Voigt, Kevin Taylor, and aforementioned Andrew DeFrancesco.

As Chairmen they had made decisions to generate convertible notes and warrants to SOL Global Investments Corp and SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC. All throughout 2021. Convertible loans allow short-term debts to be turned into cash equity.

View attachment 2016917

SOL Global Investment Group is ran by Kevin Taylor. Andrew DeFrancesco--the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC--was the individual who put Simply Mac in a position to sell EV products for his own personal financial gain.

View attachment 2016918

Here is proof of Andrew
View attachment 2016919
These men are thieves, liars, and scum. They have jeopardized the lives of over 350 employees, and have displaced 99% of them within 6 months. They funneled the remaining funds into their subsidiary companies SOL Global and SOL Verano--all of 2021--squeezing Simply Mac dry before filing Bankruptcy. A month ago they told us we were restructuring, and without warning we were all terminated and will not be paid for a months worth of labor. We have to file claims with the bankruptcy court which could take months.

Our store was filled with thousands of dollars in inventory, but was never purchased and was never allocated to stores that sold those products. EV products were eventually allocated after months of them not being sold. Apple put holds on repairs we commenced for customers, some are sitting unfinished in my store as I'm typing this. Along with finished ones that won't be released until things clear up. They continuously fired and consolidated district and regional positions to line their pockets. All Operations coordinators, regional managers and directors, all bounced from the Gmail without saying a word to the lower end employees. They are most likely all still getting paid.

These people have ruined the security of hundreds, and they deserve to be held accountable. All my claims derive from the aforementioned SEC report and personal investigation.

@JDSeig01 FBI and SEC and Secret Service should be jointly investigated this POS and fraud.

 

[Benjamins]

had no idea simply mac was a GameStop company.

 

[Benjamins]

I worked there for a year at the Lawrence, KS location, we were a store that opened in 2020. Worked as an operations manager, and I could tell you first hand it wasn't the fault of the pandemic. Inventory was not distributed to the correct stores, and investment in EV products are what destroyed Simply Mac. The managers have worked, including myself, 35-85 hours and will NOT be getting paid for their labor.

Simply Mac was taken over by Reiner Voigt in 2016, and upon arrival had fired the purchasing team (this was said from an accountant in a group we formed after termination). Andrew Defrancesco was appointed the head of the purchasing as a sole representative. Andrew Defranceso is also an investor in EV TOYS, and is the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC (Subsidiary to SOL Global Investments Corp).. These details will matter in a moment.

These are the Chairmen of the company, the chairmen had claimed to be a full board representation to General Managers and even regional managers. In order to be a chairman, you had to invest (via Simply Mac SEC Annual Report) in the company. The numbers next to each name is a chair representative, meaning that 3 men represented multiple chairmen positions.

View attachment 2016914

These were the payouts of 2021 to the Chairmen, they had claimed lackluster sales during the holiday seasons. My store did not have sufficient inventory to sell what we needed on those holidays.
View attachment 2016915

And the executives, another reason for their claims of bankruptcy was inadequate funding from an investor (they had told us this during company meetings). They had consolidated their debt from nearly 50m down to 14m in a 6 year process, this reasoning is false and the SEC report says otherwise.
View attachment 2016916

Note their names, Reiner Voigt, Kevin Taylor, and aforementioned Andrew DeFrancesco.

As Chairmen they had made decisions to generate convertible notes and warrants to SOL Global Investments Corp and SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC. All throughout 2021. Convertible loans allow short-term debts to be turned into cash equity.

View attachment 2016917

SOL Global Investment Group is ran by Kevin Taylor. Andrew DeFrancesco--the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC--was the individual who put Simply Mac in a position to sell EV products for his own personal financial gain.

View attachment 2016918

Here is proof of Andrew
View attachment 2016919
These men are thieves, liars, and scum. They have jeopardized the lives of over 350 employees, and have displaced 99% of them within 6 months. They funneled the remaining funds into their subsidiary companies SOL Global and SOL Verano--all of 2021--squeezing Simply Mac dry before filing Bankruptcy. A month ago they told us we were restructuring, and without warning we were all terminated and will not be paid for a months worth of labor. We have to file claims with the bankruptcy court which could take months.

Our store was filled with thousands of dollars in inventory, but was never purchased and was never allocated to stores that sold those products. EV products were eventually allocated after months of them not being sold. Apple put holds on repairs we commenced for customers, some are sitting unfinished in my store as I'm typing this. Along with finished ones that won't be released until things clear up. They continuously fired and consolidated district and regional positions to line their pockets. All Operations coordinators, regional managers and directors, all bounced from the Gmail without saying a word to the lower end employees. They are most likely all still getting paid.

These people have ruined the security of hundreds, and they deserve to be held accountable. All my claims derive from the aforementioned SEC report and personal investigation.

What are EV Products? like accessories for Tesla EV?

 

[JDSeig01]

What are EV Products? like accessories for Tesla EV?

The products were Segway, Apollo, GranTech, and House of Lithium.

House of Lithium is the one in particular that was owned by an investor in our company. House of Lithium had a Yamee battery in it, upon further investigation; Yamee makes the same bikes, and is probably the OEM of House of Lithium.

 

[djdj]

That's unfortunate. Simply Mac provided much better service than Apple Stores.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Ouch, that’s one of our local AASPs. Fortunately we still have Best Buy and another local. I’ll bet a few repairs will be stuck in limbo though 😬

OMG. That could actually happen. They shut down and still have people's computers.
When Sears Home Life Furniture did chapter 7 eons ago, people had paid for furniture in the stores that went to liquidation and never got refunds. It was a hot mess.

 

[Terriethefoxbot🦊🤖]

My guess is that it could have possibly been COVID related financial problems. This pandemic has had a huge impact on jobs, businesses and small businesses. Very sad, no one deserves this kind of stress

 

[Terriethefoxbot🦊🤖]

That's unfortunate. Simply Mac provided much better service than Apple Stores.

it's just depressing that this had to happen, darn covid

 

[yabeweb]

What is that % ?

We are talking a 2% directly from Apple that can be a 5% if you buy from a wholeseller.

If you think that Amazon usually sells them with discount higher than that...

Also consider that selling a 2500 euro machine at 4% (wich is already "higher") grants you 100 dollars, you have then to remove 22% of VAT wich gives you 88 euros.
Then remove taxes you are paying on it... you can see that selling a 2500 machine doesn't grant you much return and you don't sell one each day (and even if you did you'd be making 2728 to be taxed anyway).

Now if you bought directly from Apple, you'd be making half of that!

As someone suggested the big money was on upgrades (ram / SSD) but those are now a thing of the past.

That means, you have to sell a lot of covers or 3rd party accessories to make it work.

 

[BellSystem]

Buys dying company from another dying company and surprised it didn’t do well. Apple resellers have been dying out since 2001. Apple Stores put them all out around here. The few survivors have other niche services that keep them going. Since opening the stores, Apple made resellers enemy number one. The margins on repairs are not even close to what they were in the early 00’s. In fact one of our early Apple Store training items was to tell us why we were better than a reseller and how we should tell that to customers. Apple has been trying to get rid of all of them for years. They stopped the authorized resellers and repair programs years ago. The only way to be one is to buy an operating business.

You can shoot fanboy Apple Kool-Aid out your ears all day long….the truth here is Apple killed them all by not supporting them, PURPOSELY opening near them, and PURPOSELY steering customers away from them. This chain may have had other issues…but at the core…Apple led them and the rest to failure. You can’t blame the store for all the customers going to the Apple Stores because Apple presents no other options to people.

 

[Maximara]

Wich on a Mac are non replaceable….

Depends on how old the Mac is and even with newer Macs you can have external drives (I boot off a 1 TB SSD on my 2013 iMac.)

 

[Maximara]

Buys dying company from another dying company and surprised it didn’t do well. Apple resellers have been dying out since 2001. Apple Stores put them all out around here. The few survivors have other niche services that keep them going. Since opening the stores, Apple made resellers enemy number one. The margins on repairs are not even close to what they were in the early 00’s. In fact one of our early Apple Store training items was to tell us why we were better than a reseller and how we should tell that to customers. Apple has been trying to get rid of all of them for years. They stopped the authorized resellers and repair programs years ago. The only way to be one is to buy an operating business.

You can shoot fanboy Apple Kool-Aid out your ears all day long….the truth here is Apple killed them all by not supporting them, PURPOSELY opening near them, and PURPOSELY steering customers away from them. This chain may have had other issues…but at the core…Apple led them and the rest to failure. You can’t blame the store for all the customers going to the Apple Stores because Apple presents no other options to people.

Total nonsense unless you define "near" as about 50 miles (distance between Las Cruces, NM to nearest Apple store...which was in El Paso). The one store that was exclusively Apple died c 2008 but the one that did general electronics resale (Edgar Digital-Electronics) is still around but they didn't carry the RAM I needed for my reverb 2007 Mac so I got that from an online sales (the people at Best Buy tried to sale me the wrong RAM)

The reality is by the time most people want to sale a Mac it is so old that at best they will get little for it.

 

[Sevenfeet]

I hadn't paid attention to the Simply Mac situation until the end was announced but based on how it happened and the fact they shut down before an expected payroll, it makes me sad and frankly angry. My home base of Nashville had a long time Apple retailer, Macauthority, be taken over by Simply Mac years ago. I can't blame the owners for selling out when they did. Macauthority was a Nashville based store that toward its end was branching out to other regional stores in Huntsville and Louisville, even in the era of Apple stores. Macauthority's original store dated back to the early 80s when under a different name specialized in Apple ][ solutions for the K-12 market. I purchased from them for many years and attended many Mac user group meetings in that store. The arrival of the Apple Store in Green Hills Mall was the beginning of the end of their dominance of brick and mortar Mac sales and service, previously holding their own against bigger rivals like Best Buy and before that, CompUSA. They were also the official retailer for Vanderbilt University students.

But Macauthority had wisely branched out to underserved smaller markets after Apple came to Nashville and since I have friends in markets without Apple stores, I know how important the smaller retailers were to fill in the gaps in the sales and service territory. SimplyMac on the face had adopted a similar strategy as a larger regional retailer but it's clear that their operational practices were not compatible with a long term strategy.

 

[svish]

16 years - long time since it started. Many will miss the stores!

 

[StudioMacs]

I worked there for a year at the Lawrence, KS location, we were a store that opened in 2020. Worked as an operations manager, and I could tell you first hand it wasn't the fault of the pandemic. Inventory was not distributed to the correct stores, and investment in EV products are what destroyed Simply Mac. The managers have worked, including myself, 35-85 hours and will NOT be getting paid for their labor.

Simply Mac was taken over by Reiner Voigt in 2016, and upon arrival, had fired the purchasing team (this was said from an accountant in a group we formed after termination). Andrew Defrancesco was appointed the head of the purchasing as a sole representative. Andrew Defranceso is also an investor in EV TOYS, and is the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC (Subsidiary to SOL Global Investments Corp).. These details will matter in a moment.

View attachment 2016947

These are the Chairmen of the company, the chairmen had claimed to be a full board representation to General Managers and even regional managers. In order to be a chairman, you had to invest (statement via Simply Mac SEC Annual Report) in the company. The numbers next to each name is a chair representative, meaning that 3 men represented multiple chairmen positions.

View attachment 2016914

These were the payouts of 2021 to the Chairmen, they had claimed lackluster sales during the holiday seasons. My store did not have sufficient inventory to sell what we needed on those holidays.
View attachment 2016915

And the executives, another reason for their claims of bankruptcy was inadequate funding from an investor (they had told us this during company meetings). The investors were the chairmen themselves. View attachment 2016948
View attachment 2016916
Note their names, Reiner Voigt, Kevin Taylor, and aforementioned Andrew DeFrancesco.

As Chairmen they had made decisions to generate convertible notes and warrants to SOL Global Investments Corp and SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC. All throughout 2021. Convertible loans allow short-term debts to be turned into cash equity.

View attachment 2016917

SOL Global Investment Group is ran by Kevin Taylor. Andrew DeFrancesco--the CEO of SOL Verano Blocker 1 LLC--was the individual who put Simply Mac in a position to sell EV products for his own personal financial gain.

View attachment 2016918

Here is proof of Andrew
View attachment 2016919
These men are thieves, liars, and scum. They have jeopardized the lives of over 350 employees, and have displaced 99% of them within 6 months. They funneled the remaining funds into their subsidiary companies SOL Global and SOL Verano--all of 2021--squeezing Simply Mac dry before filing Bankruptcy. A month ago they told us we were restructuring, and without warning we were all terminated and will not be paid for a months worth of labor. We have to file claims with the bankruptcy court which could take months.
View attachment 2016949
Our store was filled with thousands of dollars in inventory, but was never purchased and was never allocated to stores that sold those products. Ex, We had over 60 adapters worth 50$, but only sold 2 a month. Hundreds of cases that were never bought.. EV products were eventually allocated after months of them not being sold.

Apple put holds on repairs we commenced for customers, some are sitting unfinished in my store as I'm typing this. Along with finished ones that won't be released until things clear up. They continuously fired and consolidated district and regional positions to line their pockets. All Operations coordinators, regional managers and directors, all bounced from the Gmail without saying a word to the lower end employees. They are most likely all still getting paid.

These people have ruined the security of hundreds, and they deserve to be held accountable. All my claims derive from the aforementioned SEC report and personal investigation.

It reminds me of how the much larger Sears was intentionally run into the ground in an effort to bleed it if it’s assets on the way down under the guise of restructuring and course corrections.

 

[MrENGLISH]

I had placed an order with SimplyMac back in March and used Affirm for financing. I had followed up with SimplyMac at the beginning of April, May, and June for a status update on when my order would ship. They would say that they were experiencing a delay and were hoping to have stock by the end of April, then it was end of May, and then most recently the end of July. I was tempted to cancel my order but when I looked at Apple's shipping times they were currently saying late August. So I figured I would just keep my order with SimplyMac since it was tied up with Affirm's financing anyways and I have been making good on my payments to Affirm for this order each month up to this point.

Now I'm worried that I'll be completely screwed over by all of this.

I spoke with Affirm today and the customer service rep said that there is nothing they can do because SimplyMac needs to refund them for the loan first. But I can't reach SimplyMac anymore. I escalated this to a supervisor and requested to speak someone from their fraud department. They said it could take two weeks to even hear back from them and that normally they only have a 60 day window for purchase issues. SimplyMac really screwed me over! And if Affirm doesn't make this right, don't ever use Affirm to make a purchase as they offer no buyer protection.

 

[fhall1]

Too bad Simply Mac wasn't publicly traded. The traders who rescued GameStop and AMC could have stepped in to rescue Simply Mac. Instead of 🚀, it's now View attachment 2016613

😥

Not really....just because people might have bought a s**t-ton of their stock wouldn't have improved their revenue stream at all. That money doesn't go to the company.