Originally published at: Sonex Announces Immediate Closure
Owner Mark Schaible cites sales decline, lender pressure and cash-flow constraints in video message.
Terrible news for all those who have bought partial kits and also for suppliers, employees and Mark’s family.
I can’t help wondering if this was an example of the Osborne Effect, in which a company finds itself competing with its own future products. In other words, I’m wondering if too many customers who might have bought a Sonex kit were holding off because they were excited about the High Wing and/or the 2-seater jet.
The Osborne Effect is named after an early 1980s home computer company, which announced an upcoming new model before it was ready to sell it. Buyers stopped buying its existing product to wait for the new one, which ruined the company’s cash flows and resulted in its bankruptcy. It sounds awfully similar.
First dibs on the high wing prototype!!!
No, i think that it sunk because people today have the attention span of a cat. And if one cannot do anything without a telephone in their hand, it won’t get done.
Karroilot the data does nit agree with you New Kit Planes
The kit industry is growing at about 7.3 percent which is much faster than the economy as a whole.
A reading of the release plainly stated the firm had Been doing poorly with declining sales and a significant carrying debt. IF you cannot service debt you go out of business. VANS would up in a similar position due partly to supply shortages but largely due to some poor engineering decisions which resulted in a large increase in costs with no improvements in revenue. They survived as thier creditors were willing to carry the debt and forgive a lot of money.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of people buy those kits, as opposed to just how many kits get completed. And actually flown. Me personally, am a rental pilot. I don’t have the time, space, money, and wherewithal to go the kit plane route. I would probably be retired and or dead before it would come to fruition…
Sonex is dealing with normal business and does not understand the power of their resale customer base. Let me explain this with another company example. A well known successful Recumbent Bicycle Mfg called “Easy Racers” of Watsonville, CA adjacent to the Watsonville Airport made the best recumbent bikes to date. They were so good that their most popular model
“Tour Easy” has been ridden Coast to Coast across the USA more times
than any other Bicycle Brand and model! 100% true. The owner died and the business was sold to a guy who liked motor cycles more than bicycles.
He combined the two businesses. He redesigned the Tour Easy and Gold Rush and I bought both because they were better. He complained to me that
the Easy Racer used bike market was killing his new bike sales!! I told him “No your used bike sales give your loyal customers value and advertisement
when they sell their old bike to buy a new bike from you!”. No one who does not know Easy Racer is going to buy a $5K bike cold off the press. By supporting the used bike market you are giving loyal customers value in the resale to buy your new bike because they know and trust your business.
Your new bike is not twice the bike value of your older bikes! I have always
bought used before this sale. I bought a great bike for half of what a new one was. I took a chance on it and now like your bikes enough to buy new!
All 100% true! In the end he convinced himself the problem with new sales was the used bike market so he stopped supporting those customers!
He promptly went bankrupt and shutdown the best Easy Racer line of Recumbent bikes ever! No old customers or new customers would buy anything. So Sad…. My point in telling you this story is because SONEX is telling us the used sales are starving the new sales! Bullshit! Sales come and sales go and the real truth is the high wing took too long to develop!
How many $200k Jet customers are there? How many High Wing customers are there. Well I know for a fact that about half of all aircraft sold are high wing and half are low wing…. Let that sink in a bit.. If Sonex just put all hands on deck to complete the hight wing it would immediately double its sales !!!
This is yet another sad story of mis-management and once again mis-blame
of sales data and failure to recognize the value of any customer who flys or rides your products! Guys this is not hard! What do car dealers do with used cars? Yea, trade them in all day long and all they can get!!! In the case of the
bicycle dude, I told him to offer a trade in for every new bike that was a previous customer. Get that bike for a song and resell it for more profit.
Then the mfg could make a market in the used value of his bike brand.
Set a floor price to support your new price!! And support every customer
who rides your bikes, build loyalty and value. Make it profitable because
you set the prices. Do not blame your customers for your ignorance and greed! Maybe ignorance is too kind a word, “Stupid” might be more accurate.
For sure it was the right word for Easy Racer!
To be fair, it is near impossible to sell used homebuilt airplanes and avoid
extreme financial risk. However, you could pass everything to a licensed broker to buy from your trade-in fleet and be hands off of that risk. Sonex could manage a relationship by having the customer sell directly to the
broker/dealer and that money goes to the purchase of a new airplane kit!
The broker does not even have to pay Sonex on delivery, just on re-sale.
Any number of ways this can work.
I just wrote a business plan and case study for it. Someone should buy Sonex and light the fire over there before its to late. They need to up the brand and hang on to the value they have built into the industry by upgrading their products. Double down and take advantage of MOSAIC!!!
From the business situation which is the topic the purchase of the kit is what is important. Are you are NOW asserting with no information to back you up that there is NOW a reduction incompletion rates heretofore NOT seen in the data? While there is no single official database for every kit sold, industry data from
KITPLANESand major manufacturers show that completion rates have improved dramatically from a roughly 10% success rate decades ago to roughly 50% today for modern kits.
[image]KITPLANES
Key Historical Trends
- The Early Era (1960s–1970s): Building often required “scratch-building” from plans, necessitating master-level skills in welding, woodworking, or composites. Completion rates were low, with some experts estimating only 1 in 10 kits or plans-built projects ever made it to the air.
- The “Kit Revolution” (1980s–1990s): The introduction of high-quality kits, like the
and early Van’s Aircraft RV series, began to simplify the process with better manuals and pre-fabricated parts.
- The Modern Era (2000s–Present): Advances in computer-aided design (CAD) and CNC-matched-hole technology have reduced build times from thousands of hours to as few as 500–1,500 hours. These “quick-build” options have pushed completion rates for popular models toward the 50% mark.
[image]Reddit +5
Completion Factors
| Factor | Historical (1970s) | Modern (2020s) |
|---|---|---|
| Typical Build Time | 2,000+ hours | 500–1,500 hours |
| Skill Requirement | Master fabricator | “Patience and diligence” |
| Success Rate | ~10% | ~50% |
| Support | Limited to letters/calls | Online communities & factory workshops |
Why Projects Stall
Despite improvements, roughly half of all kits still go unfinished. Common reasons cited by builders on forums like Van’s Air Force and EuroGA include:
- Time & Life Changes: Projects often span 5–10 years, during which family or career demands can change.
- Financial Constraints: The total cost of an aircraft can be three times the initial airframe kit price once engines and avionics are added.
- Technical Fatigue: Losing momentum during complex stages, such as wiring or fiberglass finishing.
[image]KITPLANES +2
And what you are missing, in addition to Sonex, BD4200, is addressing markets, where demand is located. Jetson 1 has sold over 635 Jetson 1s in the last 18 months. Or, ultralight electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft will control the aircraft market for the foreseeable future. In addition to the Jetson 1 is the: Pivotal Helix, Skytech X1, and the Yivtol S-0. So, fixed wing aircraft are seen as antiques by most people. Any aircraft that will operate vertically trumps anything that needs a runway. I look forward to coming and going from my driveways; like any auto, but from above. And with the safety features: 3 separate softwares that continually talk to each other for aircraft stability, a ballistic parachute, and LIDAR or equivalent for obstruction avoidance, and being ultralight with the velocity limited to 63 mph, ultralight eVTOLs are safer than any auto or a jet fighter.
Hi Terry,
Your enthusiasm has been a trademark of every pie in the sky technical leap
in the kit plane market. I have been playing with a broad interest in aviation
from hang gliding to fast glass and most in between. What it boils down to is usefulness in the real world. Vertical takeoff and landing takes an enormous amount of power. Range is the complete opposite. To get useful range you need ultra efficiency. Both combined are mutually adversarial. Honestly unless there is a newer lighter energy dense power system, vertical and range are not yet practical.
In order for masses of flying craft for masses of people we need better tech and infrastructure. Taking off in a dense urban environment with spinning rotors will never be accepted by non-flying neighbors. You need a rural ranch type setting. The vast majority of aircraft operations will always occur at dedicated airports.
Sonex made affordable kit planes with some novel design attributes. Like I said, if they had focused on the high wing 2 place before a $100,000 two place jet their customer base would immediately double. Would that doubling be enough to keep them in business? Not if they blame their demise on customers selling their used airplanes! Most new car brands are sold to existing customers who sell their older models to buy the newer model.
I would not be surprised if 80-90% all car sales are in this group.
I know something about modern sailplanes and for sure all of the older
models are sold to junior buyers. Sellers order a new sailplane for several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without selling their old gliders most could not afford a new glider. So its just silly to read about Sonex closing is because of customers selling used airplanes.
Personally I like to fly high wing. When I fly I like to look down. If Sonex had made a mini me of a Cessna Cardinal in Tri and Tail it would be the hottest seller ever!
A Cardinal was the best airplane I have owned for all around usefulness.
But I have three airplanes right now, one fast, one STOL and a motor glider.
The Wing is the Thing!
No one wing can do it all..
Sonex RIP
As a long time RANS flier/customer, I’d like to give a shout out to the longest running kit plane company in the world by far! No drama, no multiple changes of ownership with confusion in between, just plain old continual delivery of the product promised, on time, and all the parts there, RARE in the kit plane world, much less for multiple decades. Too bad about Sonex, but hardly a surprise, as it’s long been a truism that the best way to make a small fortune in the industry is to start with a large fortune!
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