What happened to SMA...
SMA Out of Business 3/7/2006
KM2 Limited; SMA-Billet, LLC and SMA-Patents, LLC all filed voluntary Chapter 7 Bankruptcy petitions in the District of Arizona today. A Hummer owner in AZ went over to SMA today and here's what he found. When I got there, there was a sign on the front door of the property management seizing all assets for unpaid rent. I was able to talk to the maintenance guy and they took as much out as they could and wouldn't let me look inside. I did see that they still had product in there however. The maint. guy did tell me that there was a brand new H3 all done up inside and left over. He even said that SMA left there brake and rotor supplier in New Mexico high and dry. He had to drive all the way to Arizona to find this out. Their phone already has been disconnected. It will be in trust for 60 days for right now.
Here's the rough unofficial story of Stinger Mac Accessories from what I remember with information from an industry insider:
Cepek started producing products for the H1 in 1994. The owner of Stinger had some kind of; from what I remember successful business selling something to the automotive industry. Stinger thought he'd come up with some of his own products, and apparently thought this was a huge busiess, so he rented a warehouse and set up an operation. The idea for the 'D' ring brush guard came from another old Hummer Dealer I think who's name is George Thompson from TN. He gave the idea to the Stinger guys at a Kinzlow event which I think was in 1995. There were virtually no H1s around at the time.
Around 1996 a little company named MAC owned by Jason Plotke appeared on the HML selling halogen headlights for motorcycles and Hummers. He expanded his line to carry a few more accessories but never impressed me as being a force in the business.
Stinger had the name in the Hummer accessory business but evidently it just wasn't that profitable. Next thing you know Jason Plotke somehow ended up taking over, buying, merging with Stinger, so
Stinger Mac.
Sometime later, around 2001ish, Mike Kenney entered the scene and merged, purchased, or again similar, joined in with Stinger Mac and formed SMA, Stinger Mac Accessories, and then converted in some manner over to KM2 Limited, DBA Stinger Mac Accessories.
Mike Kenney was in a steel products mfg. company and had CNC machines, etc. and purportedly
had deep pockets.
Sometime during this process, a guy named Cole Balzer, who once was working at Thousand Oaks Hummer in the parts department decided he wanted to go back to school and moved to AZ to attend AZ State.
His dad lived there, and so i believe he was living at home, but was not all that happy about going to
school, and ended up talking with Stinger Mac or SMA, i'm not sure who it was at the time, and went
to work for them.
Coincidentally, Cole's dad was a V-P with GM, and was a mucky muck of sorts, and so, the GM connection.
He was able to get them an approved vendor status, and was able to get an H2 long before they were out and on the market and they developed the the tire carrier and other products before anyone else had a chance, and at the same time got the GM contract for their tire carrier.
Somewhere in there, Mike Kenney came along and was going to take them to the next step based on his mfg. experience.
All of a sudden they became very snooty and thought they were God's gift to the business, and alienated just about everybody.
They spent a ton of money on just about everything, and moved from three locations into one, which was that 200,000+ building they have in Tempe.
Things weren't quite as great as they thought, most who spent any time there, figured out they were
totally out of control, and didn't know what they were doing.
When they had all the billet products, and their other GM products, they had a sweet deal with GM
in that they were the "Official" supplier of H2 products and the dealers were instructed to purchase those products either directly or through GM. I believe they were overwhelmed and could never supply the products in a timely enough manner shorty after the startup and built some defective products, like three versions of the tire carrier. GM recently cut their orders for products to about 40% of what it once was and possibly owed them a lot of money for tooling that was not being paid.
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