I happen to know Bob Letterman of VLS (Verlinden, Letterman & Stok) from the early 90's and others (Verlinden, Lewis Pruneau, etc...) associated with the company.  I also attended their first Convention in 1991.  Verlinden and VLS went their separate ways years ago and I believe the two are separate companies. Many consider the initial Verlinden affter-market products as the beginning of the Golden Age of Modeling.  I certainly do.  And The Verlinden Way' series of how-to books certainly rank up there with Shep Paine's modeling toombs.

However, as early as the mid-90s other after-market companies soon became more specialized, innovative and more flexible than Verlinden and soon the company was out-classed in many areas.  Most of their PE and resin upgrades were notoriously difficult to work with, and their resin figs soon fell by the wayside as companies like Alpine came along...although sad, my modeling efforts will not suffer as I haven't bought a Verlinden product in years. But I do recognize their groundbreaking efforts that forever changed the way we all approach and build models...

When ever I needed AM parts the first place I ALWAYS went to was Verlinden. Now I'll have to turn my sights elsewhere. It was an incredible company which I recently bought stuff from them. Au revoir monsieur Verlinden et bon chance.

Funny thing, I went to the hobby shop today to pick up a special order.  It was a Verlinden Building in 1/35.  I'll miss Verlinden.  I had a Verlinden catalogue from the 80's, and it was a great inspiration for me in this little hobby of ours.   

Yeah, I remember ordering their stuff from the old Squadron catalog back in the '80s. I thought then it was so cool to be able to customize my projects.

Sad to see them go, hope someone like you Liegghio can buy out some of their stuff and keep it going.

Modelhaus has also shut down, and they produced some really handy aftermarket components for auto models. Apparently they couldn't find anyone who could both afford to buy out the business, and be willing to put in the enormous amount of work for not much profit required to run a high quality resin product line.

I'm retired now and did some research into whether it would be feasible for me to invest in buying them out. I concluded that the only way the work load would be manageable would be to laser scan their molds and produce the product line as 3D prints. Unfortunately at the current level of technology, 3D prints that use affordable printers and printing stock require too much post printing smoothing and re-work. Maybe with another 5 years advancement it would have worked.

Hello!

That sure sounds like a bad thing. What's on that facebook link? I can't access it. From what I understand, and what Baron wrote here: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/general_discussion/f/50/t/172329.aspx good old Francois decided not to sell his busines but just wipe it out, is that right? Sounds like a funny thing to do, such a company has to be worth something. OK, I didn't buy nothing from them for quite a time and what used to be top drawer 20 years ago turned so-so nowadays, but that still is a pity. I can only wish mister Verlinden nice retirement and hope that not too many paople will be unemployed now. Thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Wahaaaat! no more Verlinden??