Maker of Big Ben, Porsche & Hilson Pipes Declares Bankruptcy
-
Kevin Godbee - Mar 8, 2012
- 1 min read
Via Email from Pieter Potmeer
PipesMagazine.com received the below email this morning from Pieter Potmeer, who is a member of the Dutch Pipe Forums: http://www.pijprokersforum.nl/.
Some sad news was released today. The last pipe factory in the Netherlands, Koninklijke Gubbels en Zn., recently filed for bankruptcy. Gubbels was the manufacturer of the Big Ben, Porsche Design and Hilson pipe brands, among others.
Here’s a translation of an article placed in ‘De Limburger’, a local newspaper:
— start quote —
PIPE FACTORY GUBBELS BANKRUPT
The Roermond-based pipe factory Koninklijke Pijpen Elbert Gubbels & Zn. (Royal Pipes Elbert Gubbels & son) has gone bankrupt. This was confirmed by company lawyer Wim Vondenhoff on behalf of the company’s board of directors. Gubbels employs 26 people.
The company has existed since 1870 and is run by the fourth generation of the Gubbels family. According to Vondenhoff, the company curator is currently exploring possibilities for relaunching the company on a smaller scale. There would be room for 18 employees in such an event.
Vondenhoff points to expansive debts accumulated by the company as the cause for its bankruptcy. These debts are the result of a large stock and decreasing sales as a result of the economic crisis. "Pipes are a luxury product. Demand for them has simply decreased." says Vondenhoff.
— end quote —
Source: http://www.limburger.nl/article/20120306/REGIONIEUWS03/120309756#Pijpenfabriek_Gubbels_failliet
Written by Kevin Godbee
10 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
2 Fresh Kurt Balleby Pipes |
3 Fresh Mike Sebastian Bay Pipes |
36 Fresh Rattray's Pipes |
84 Fresh Savinelli Pipes |
2 Fresh Ryan Alden Pipes |
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonightâs show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonightâs show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, letâs just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. Thatâs better, isnât it? Whatâs got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big oneâChristmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. Itâs in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. Itâs aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedomâs philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, âI believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.â Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Punditâs way of summing it up. You just donât go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. âI am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,â said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ainât easy to turn on the lights in Punditâs rock pit head. Now itâs time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love itâShelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. Thatâs one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. Weâll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well thereâs nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appearâlattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctionsâso, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing oneâs sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, Ă la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blendâs description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores wellâit smokes light, and itâs easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marquesâthe small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I havenât had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. Iâve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case Iâm merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing Iâd endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, itâs (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so itâs a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, weâve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, weâve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliffâs ever madeâand they make a ton of them. First off, itâs not overbearing in the leastâquite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics theyâve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearthâa perfect invocation of HerbstdĂźfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonightâs show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
The Market is adjusting to the fact that there are not as many pipe smokers today as there were forty years ago.
Sad news. I hope they can come back under some sort of reorganization. đ
Never give up!
Never surrender!
Never heard of em…
Hire better marketing people.
Decrease the price of some of those fancy pipes and you just may sell a few more.
I wonder if another reason is that that Estate Pipe market is booming, it must have a big effect on the sales of new pipes, but then more people have large collections of Pipes now when years ago two or 3 would have been a collection. Sad news, hope they do start up again.
Eh Seems to me looking at the prices of the porsch pipes they did this to them self lts just a name ffs nothing there to justify a price like that.
This is a surprise and sad. I met the young Mr. Gubbels in the NL last October and was very impressed by his enthousiasm for reinvigorating the business. I hope he can find a way to continue! VEV
I’d pay good money for one of those Porsche pipes… but not the kind of money they charged. I suppose if you can afford a Porsche, the cost of the pipe was incidental. Buying the pipe would put me back one payment from eventually owning the car. The car is more important to me.
Simon
I agree that the Porsche pipes are somewhat overpriced, however, the strongest brand this factory produced is Big Ben: a brand of affordable pipes up there in terms of quality with the likes of Stanwell, Savinelli, Chacom, etc. I own a dozen or so Big Ben pipes, and they are all excellent smokers (and include my best). Gubbels has recently been working on releasing a new line of pipes under the Hilson brand, co-designed by the late Rainer Barbi, and was also given the honor of providing the pipes for the 2011 slow smoking world cup. They may not have been big in the US, but most of pipe-smoking Western Europe is hoping they’ll do a restart and will be producing pipes for many years to come.
Hello people ,Gubbels whas also the factory from bugatti pipes.
From smokeshops in Germany city Achen in Europe the told me that there is a litle sunlight for the factory because Vauen( one of the largest factorys in Germany) is talking to buy the compeny.
I hope in this diffecult times fro ecenomics it will work out for this nice and good pipemakers.