Due to various business and personnel reasons, the Back Alley Trading Company [BKAT] will close up shop and liquidate. This process has already begun and communication has been sent to all current employees.
At this point, most of the pilots have moved out to W-space as part of the Syndicate Special Operations Division [SSOD], a corporation within the same alliance (United Trade Syndicate, [TRAMP]) as the Company.
Why will the company close?
I won’t discuss every factor here, primarily because several of them have to do with the private and personal matters of other pilots. Out of respect for their privacy, then, I’ll set those aside, except to say that plans didn’t work out for them as well as they’d hoped, either.
But in general, when BKAT joined TRAMP, we split the combat wing and most exploration off to a new corp, SSOD, under the leadership of Chainer Cygnus and a team he assembled. As it turned out, most BKAT pilots went there, leaving only a few in this corp. Most of the remaining pilots have not had the opportunity to fly as much as they’d like, dealing with planetside issues. Rather than try to rebuild the corp in this particular state, then, I decided to close it. Only one other pilot owns shares, and he will receive an appropriate payout for their value.
I may write in the future about additional lessons learned, but not right now.
What does this mean for you?
I don’t have any intention to retire, certainly. I have short-term plans I will announce once BKAT fully closes, but I intend to remain in Republic space for now and will continue many of the same activities in which I have participated for some time. These plans do include continuing to fly with the United Trade Syndicate.
However, I do not intend to rebuild a new industrial corp right now and will fly solo (in the context of a corp). In the long run, who knows?
I count every single pilot who’s flown with BKAT as a friend and look forward to future operations with TRAMP pilots, including those in SSOD.
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