Yesterday, six years after the company was founded, the liquidation of Heighway Pinball was approved by the remaining shareholders, bringing the story of the UK’s first pinball manufacturer to a close. That closure, along with the very few remaining company assets, means that anyone owed machines, parts, refunds, invoice payments or wages is unlikely to receive anything back from the liquidation process. For Heighway Pinball it really is ‘Game Over’.
The man who founded and ran the business until June last year is Andrew Heighway. He has attracted an unprecedented level of opprobrium and hostility from members of the pinball community and from former Heighway Pinball employees for the way he managed his company, and how, nine months after leaving with a severance package, the factory is now closed, the stock cupboards are bare and a team of workers are out of their jobs.
Pinball News has interviewed Andrew Heighway to address these points and many more questions about how the company was run.
Our original intention was to conduct a phone interview, but Andrew was concerned about inadvertently saying something which might ultimately result in legal action against him. As publishers of his interview, Pinball News was also concerned about this and offered him the opportunity to redact or remove only those parts of his answers which might be legally contentious. Andrew wished instead to have our questions submitted in advance so he could consider his responses, which was not something we were prepared to do in an audio interview. We felt it would be disingenuous to conduct a seemingly spontaneous and unrehearsed interview if Andrew knew all the questions we would be asking. We wanted to hear his instinctive reactions and interject with additional questions if we felt there were any points which appeared unclear or contradictory.
Read the full article at http://www.pinballnews.com
