*** Copyright, Group-A Autosports, 2012 ***

First, we’d like to once again apologize if we’ve offended anybody. That was not our intent. We’d also like to thank those who continue to support Skunk2. Over the weekend Skunk2.com reached record sales figures. That, combined with the tremendous amount of support we’ve received from industry partners and fellow enthusiasts only reaffirms our decision to move forward.

The goal of the Skunk2 Bounty was to obtain the legal names of two individuals who incessantly troll Skunk2-related online forum threads, attacking the company with patently false and defamatory statements. These individuals have demonstrated a pattern of fabricating untrue statements regarding a company’s business practices by which they have no first-hand knowledge of. We’ve responded to these individuals’ claims time and again. That approach has not proved successful. Although we could have collected these individuals’ information by different means, we elected to seek their identities via the community—the very way they’ve chosen to continually attack Skunk2.

Within hours we’d received numerous emails and phone calls revealing the legal identities that our process server had requested. The identities, as well as those who supplied them, will remain confidential.

We understand that our using the word “bounty” has offended some of you. For that, we apologize. Our intent was to seek information; nothing more. Like many of you, Skunk2 is comprised of passionate enthusiasts; perhaps our playful side got the best of us this time with this particular tongue-in-cheek comment. We’ll do our best to ensure that that doesn’t happen again. We’ll be the first to admit that we’ve had our share of PR failures alongside our PR victories, but in the end, we’ve always done our absolute best to produce quality products that we can stand by.

Our goal with the Skunk2 Bounty is to set the record straight. It may not happen overnight, but we will ensure that the truth is known. Accusing Skunk2 of being a “copycat trading company” and having “no R&D capabilities or quality control measures” isn’t only untrue but defamatory. Promoting such libelous statements under the guise of “helping the community” is also pretty unsettling to us. And posting out-of-context company information and shipping documents doesn’t exactly reveal the real story. If we weren’t confident in these individuals’ statements being false, we never would’ve taken the situation as far as we have and as far as we plan to.

Some say that we could have handled the situation a bit more rationally, rebutting the false accusations online. The truth is, we’ve been doing just that for several years. We encourage you to search online; we trust you’ll find dozens of courteous responses from Skunk2 personnel invalidating multiple libelous and defamatory statements. A series of recent events simply proved to be the final straw.

We’re also saddened to see this situation escalate into ad-hominem and physical attacks upon Skunk2’s owner as well as cyber terrorism threats against the company to which we’ve already reported to the appropriate authorities. Regardless of what your opinions may be of Skunk2, condoning such behavior and illegal activity is simply wrong.

To be clear, Skunk2 has never hidden the fact that some of its products are manufactured overseas. In fact, we’ve made it known on several occasions, including here.

And if you question whether or not our Norco, California headquarters has an R&D facility and engineering staff that develops every Skunk2 product, please have a look at the following video.

Or this one.

Countless industry colleagues, media outlets and enthusiasts have visited Skunk2 over the years and have seen our R&D facilities and know first-hand what’s involved in a Skunk2 product going from start to finish. In fact, in 2009 we opened up our facility for a public tour where we revealed our R&D and technical facilities

Hang tight. Once our 3,500 sq-ft engineering facility addition is completed, we’ll be announcing another open house where you’ll be able to see first-hand what exactly takes place inside of Skunk2.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to address any unresolved customer service issues. If you currently own a Skunk2 product and are unsatisfied in any way, please contact us at 951-808-9888 or at helpdesk@skunk2.com. We have a dedicated customer service staff that will do its best to resolve whatever issue you may have. And moving forward, we’ll be implementing additional methods by which you may contact Skunk2 customer service.

On a final note, we’ll be opening up this post to your comments. As always, we welcome constructive comments and criticism from all. What we will not tolerate are libelous statements as well as threatening or attacking commentary. Keep it clean, and there’s no reason why you won’t see your comment approved along with an answer. We’ll do our best to approve and reply to your comments as quickly as possible.

*** Copyright, Group-A Autosports, 2012 ***