Would you buy from an insolvent kitchen manufacturer?

Hello everyone,

as announced today (but long expected), the kitchen manufacturer Alno is insolvent and has filed for bankruptcy.
Our original plan was to buy an Alno kitchen at the kitchen studio. However, nothing has been signed yet. Alno themselves say that they continue production as usual. From many industries, we know that insolvency does not necessarily mean the end of the company - but whether that is the case here, I do not know.

So now the question: do you have experience in this area and would you still buy from the manufacturer despite the insolvency, or is that too risky since this has happened before and in the end no spare parts and no service are offered anymore?
In my opinion, there should be no problem in most cases since it is not my kitchen studio that is bankrupt, but "only" the manufacturer. Spare parts, sure, possibly problematic - but the service is still provided. And presumably the appliances are also much more prone to defects than the kitchen base and countertop.

What do you think? Thanks for your opinions!

Best regards
Tom

I would go with the warehouse kitchen, order it, and wouldn’t put any deposit down. There are plenty of others that are neither more expensive nor worse. Karsten

Under no circumstances would I pay in advance.

Insolvency proceedings are meant to restructure companies and not (primarily) to liquidate them.
Not buying anything there often amounts to a death blow - but what can you do ... if the manufacturer is gone and there is no successor, there are no more spare parts and you can forget about the warranty. The dealer provides a two-year warranty and that’s it (if different, this would be an extra service).

You do not buy from the manufacturer, but from the kitchen studio. So, this is your contracting party and therefore, fundamentally, it is their problem, not yours.

But just ask your kitchen studio how they handle it.

The problem could later be more about the supply of spare parts.

The insolvency probably also affects the subsidiary Wellmann. Pino and Impuls are also further subsidiaries, but probably not affected yet. If you should switch to another kitchen, I would also not necessarily look at the subsidiaries, but rather choose a completely different manufacturer. In such a corporate network, you never know what chain reactions such an insolvency might trigger.

The problem I see is that even if production continues, delivery dates might not be met in such uncertain times (termination of personnel/payment of suppliers in advance, etc.). You might also sign a contract with the kitchen studio that then has to be canceled shortly before delivery because Alno does not continue production after all. Then you are left without a kitchen for the time being. And then the other kitchen manufacturers will have more work initially, so delivery dates will be extended.

Thanks first of all for the initial responses. So it's indeed somewhat like I suspected. The contracting party is my kitchen studio, so that's initially their problem (in terms of warranty). It's already more difficult with spare parts. A good point is also the cancellation or the uncertain delivery time (who is ultimately responsible for this? Do you actually have any claim against the studio or the manufacturer?).

In any case, I will ask my kitchen studio what they say about it (if necessary, they don't only have Alno).

A brief note on the topic of down payments. This is not an issue for us because none of the studios we visited required a down payment, but here I see it similarly as above: I make a down payment to the kitchen studio (my contracting party) and not to the insolvent manufacturer. So I am definitely on the safe side there.