Steve and Evelyn van Schagen have tipped their Sunbuster Solar Shades into liquidation
A Brisbane couple long immersed in the sale of caravans and related accessories have turned the lights out on part of their empire.
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SUNBUSTER BUST
A Brisbane couple long immersed in the sale of caravans and related accessories have turned out the lights on part of their empire.
Steve and Evelyn van Schagen tipped their Sunbuster Solar Shades business into liquidation this week after 12 years of operation, tapping Terry Rose from insolvency outfit SV Partners to clean up the mess.
Their Caboolture-based group is still trading under the banners of Sunbuster Caravans and Grasshopper Outdoors.
Steve told us on Monday that the wind up related to nothing more than a bit of a “restructure’’ but City Beat later learned that it followed a nasty dispute with a former landlord (more on that below!).
It’s still early days for Rose but he said on Tuesday that about six creditors are owed around $800,000, including related parties, financiers and that prior landlord.
He’s also investigating the “commerciality’’ of a deal done in July that saw the van Schagens offload all the company’s assets, including caravans on the lot.
Rose expects creditors will claw back a dividend but it’s not clear yet how many cents in the dollar that might be.
Records show that the couple launched their Grasshopper venture in 2009 and they have described it as an “importer manufacturer with factories in India, China and Indonesia’’.
They only registered the Sunbuster Caravans entity in September last year following that aforementioned dust-up with the landlord.
LEGAL CLASH
The van Schagens are still trading from a leased site on Lear Jet Drive, a few doors down from where they once operated.
We managed to find a fascinating window into the clash with previous landlord Lainor Investments thanks to a District Court ruling handed down in late May.
Lainor won court orders that the three-year lease had been validly terminated and Sunbuster would not be granted relief against forfeiture.
Lainor rented the site to the couple in early 2017 but moved to recover possession of the retail property in late 2018 after numerous alleged un-remedied breaches.
Frequent and often heated disputes arose over the use of the common parking area and signage erected without permission. Verbal altercations with neighbouring tenants and their customers were also common.
UNRELIABLE WITNESS
In her decision in favour of Lainor, Judge Suzanne Sheridan tore strips off Steve van Schagen, who she said suffered from a “lack of credibility’’.
“Mr van Schagen was argumentative in the witness box and during the course of his evidence showed how difficult he would have been as a tenant,’’ she wrote.
“I found Mr van Schagen to be an unreliable witness who had no insight in to his own character and was prone to exaggeration. In giving his evidence, he appeared oblivious, or in denial, as to the extreme aggression in his behaviour and was always very ready to cast blame on others,’’ she wrote.
In one flare up with a neighbouring business owner, van Schagen allegedly yelled out to him that “you’re a wanker, you cockhead’’.
“Mr van Schagen admitted that he called Mr Thompson a ‘wanker’ but denied calling him anything else,’’ Judge Sheridan noted.
Another time he claimed in court that video footage of him abusing another nearby business owner had been doctored. “No evidence was offered in relation to that assertion and I do not accept it,’’ she wrote.
Judge Sheridan concluded that van Schagen was “aggressive towards other tenants and customers…difficult to deal with…and generally made life unpleasant for others in the complex’’.
She rejected his allegation that Lainor stood to gain financially by evicting Sunbuster, which was ordered to pay the costs of the case.
Van Schagen warned that the forfeiture of the lease would see Sunbuster “devastated financially’’ but that obviously didn’t sway Sheridan in her decision.
Rose will now determine what role the eviction, among other things, played in bringing down Sunbuster.