The energy sponsor loses 30% of its customers in a single day. Will it be able to pay?

Razlan Razali, founder of the RNF team (this is the title he prefers to be attributed to him), said he was aiming for a sponsorship budget of around 11-13 million euros to manage the two Yamahas entrusted to Binder and Dovizioso.
Every aspiration is legitimate even if, looking at the sponsor panel, one wonders how the money is counted and how the missing gap can be filled.
Let’s analyze the sponsors on the panel.

Yamaha: does not offer money but takes care of the bikes and the remuneration of the riders.
Green Power: produces generators and is a small sticker on the frames.
GPNFTS: produces digital tokens and also occupies a small space.
Telcowin: although the name suggests a telecommunications company, it is a small consulting agency with local action.
Considering that the RNF sticker is that of the same team, the remaining stickers are those of technical partners and suppliers such as Barracuda, WRS, Ixon, KYT,  Akrapovic, and Beta brands already known to motorcyclists.
Added to these there are companies that are certainly not big spenders: a coffee company from Modena (Giacomelli) which can be found in all hospitality areas, an insurance company, Lange Gruppe, which probably provides policies to drivers and teams.
Then there are RCB, which makes accessories for scooters and Lotus, which makes kitchen furnitures. Certainly reputable contributors but equally certainly not millionaires.

In fact, one wonders how much money these “partners” really bring if WithU, which is the main sponsor and the biggest name in the hull, offers “only” 3 million to be in the foreground.
Is 13 million euros really a plausible target?
Does this budget include the 5 million passed by IRTA for motorcycle coverage?
If this were not the case, the matter would tend towards the dream.
And again: are the rumors  that Razali has applied for a bank loan to carry out the first tests because none of these sponsorships has yet been transformed into a bank transfer to support the activities on the track, somehow true?

Last question: why a private team, which does not pay either the bikes or the riders and which has already found a main sponsor, feels the need for ambitious proclamations, even a week before the presentation and a few days before the first tests?
Isn’t it a statement dictated by the need to show undecided or renounced investors that his project is a nice train to jump on in any case and that the noisy difficulties are not real?

In short, doubts remain and would already be sufficient if the “commercial news” did not report a rumor that can be summarized in three heavy words

¹WithU ²in ³trouble

Concerns continue to reach this site through direct reports from customers and professionals but can also be found on official channels, on consumer pages and in the mailbox of a large number of customers who have received a communication informing them of the termination of their energy supply contract by Europe Energy SpA (WithU) due to the interruption of energy supply by Terna (National Operator) to Zenergia which in turn supplies Europe Energy and WithU, which no longer supplying energy cannot collect money from around 23,000 customers from one day to the ‘other, to be precise starting  December 21, 2021.

All the customers involved are notified of their passage, ex officio to the national manager and are advised not to make payments to WithU.
The letter arrived in the homes of many Italians, you can see it here.

 

In summary, barring misinterpretations, this means that the Yamaha sponsor RNF has lost at least 25% of its customers even if some say that the percentage is much higher.

There is no company in the world, not even CocaCola or Google, that can afford a 25% cut of its customers without an internal earthquake.

And this happens at the worst historicaal moment of the tariff system which is based on costs per cubic meter under which operators like WithU are not competitive.

Those who signed a contract with this operator, in fact, paid 1.24euros per cubic meter for gas while the costs offered by the national operator are less than 60 cents. Less than half.
It is obvious that for operators like WithU (dozens of similar companies have already gone bankrupt) there are no longer the commercial levers to recover lost customers and perhaps not even  keeping those who are left who are, mathematically, on the run.
Nobody would be remain with a supplier who sells  on the free market, energy at double the price of the protected market.
Up to here it would be a one-way article in which doubts are exposed which, despite the documentation, would still be based on rumors without hearing the other party involved.

For this Misterhelmet turned to WithU and was later contacted by telephone by the founder and president Matteo Ballarin, in person.
“You are partially right on this issue as it is true that one of our suppliers, not us, had the dispatching contract closed and therefore about a quarter of our customers, 20 thousand out of about 85 thousand we have, have returned to a more protected market. All these customers should have received a letter from us in which we inform them that we are taking them back and we have deliberately favored this protection market because in December the prices of that market were lower than the free market, so when the problem arose we I thought that customers could have passed on to the market for greater protection and then returned to the free market when prices would have dropped. Users should have all received this communication (we could not find this – ed -).
I would like to underline a very important point, namely that our contract has not been closed but that of one of our suppliers as written in the letter sent by the Single Buyer. Authority (Acquirente Unico).
Many are writing that we changed their supplier without saying anything but it is not true, indeed we got very angry. “

Ballarin continues reassuring the solidity of WithU … and telling us that they have almost gladly lost 25% of customers.
“Misinterpreted, it could seem a sign of crisis of a company that has closed a dispatching contract and has lost customers. This is not what happened. Our company is one of those that are doing better in a very difficult time for the company. free market … “

Not problems but opportunities.
According to Ballarin, there are neither business problems nor sponsorship problems.

“The day of the presentation of the team (next Monday – ed -) will be an opportunity to explain a series of corporate aspects with an increase in the strength of the WithU brand. We are setting up insurance services, telemedicine, etc. Sponsorship is important but it is a minority part of all the investment we are making on the whole WithU project. Guaranteeing sponsorship is the least of the problems, so much so that we have also extended it to other sports such as volleyball and basketball in Verona. ” (WithU also sponsors Monza Calcio in Serie B – ed).

Ballarin is confident and is not afraid to tackle the issue.
“I’m not afraid to talk about it. I work in a market with powerful competitors and so I take every opportunity I have to explain who we are, it’s not a problem. We are always here.”

The responsiveness and friendliness of WithU’s top management are beyond expectations and certainly reassuring, but nothing provides more certainty than time, so we just have to wait.
The hardest part is finding a closure for this piece, hoping that it matches with the happy ending of a story that seems to be made up of problems while it is instead made up, they explain, of opportunities.
We all want to see Dovizioso and Binder’s Yamaha WithUs on TV, paying for electricity at the lowest possible price.