EK · Public chronology
Timeline
The public chronology of EK — from the company's founding in 2003, through the years that built the brand, the EKWB-era crisis covered extensively in 2024, the LM TEK brand-licence acquisition, and the operational work since. Entries are dated, sourced where the source is external, and arranged in five sections. Where a figure or a date is approximate, we say so.
Foundation
Foundation and rise
From a hobbyist operation founded by Edvard König in 2003 to a globally recognised reference brand in PC liquid cooling — the fourteen years before the 2017 change in leadership.
Foundation and rise.
Founded in 2003 by Edvard König, building on hobbyist instinct, EKWB grew rapidly from a small enthusiast-driven operation into a global leader in custom-loop PC liquid cooling. By 2006, the company had established resellers on every continent, and by the early 2010s it ranked among the three largest water-cooling brands worldwide. From 2012 to 2017, under the leadership of Mark Tanko, EK expanded its product portfolio, strengthened its global presence, and opened a purpose-built manufacturing facility in Komenda in 2014. By late 2017, EK was widely regarded as a reference brand in the category, recognized for both engineering quality and breadth of offering.
Phase 1
EKWB period — peak and decline
EK was, for most of its history, the pioneer and reference brand in PC open-loop liquid cooling. The years leading up to the 2024 public crisis are sparse on the timeline because little of what happened in private has since been independently sourced.
Original leadership departs EKWB.
CEO Mark Tanko, CTO Niko Tivadar, and Head of Marketing Andrej Škraba leave the company after a disagreement with the founder and owner about the company's direction. Executive responsibility passes back to founder Edvard König.
Cited: GamersNexus.
Peak years, then overexpansion.
Business booms through the COVID era as demand for high-end PC components spikes, with EK recognised as one of Slovenia's highest-growth companies in 2021. The growth phase led to overexpansion in investment, headcount, and business practices that could not adapt when demand contracted sharply after the COVID peak. After the correction, EKWB's revenue and margin deteriorate through 2022 and into 2023. The detail of this period was not publicly reported at the time; the broad shape was reconstructed in subsequent reporting.
Cited: Dnevnik (Slovenian).
First operational distress signal.
Approximately 25% of staff are laid off in a single round. With hindsight this is the earliest internal-facing indication that the post-COVID demand correction has become a structural problem; at the time it was not externally reported as such.
Cited: TechPowerUp.
Edvard König formally resumes the CEO role.
Founder Edvard König publicly and formally resumes the CEO position with a stated intent to address mounting operational issues.
Cited: PC Gamer.
Phase 2
EKWB period — public crisis
Three investigative reports by GamersNexus, alongside coverage by Tom's Hardware, KitGuru, PC Gamer, and others, brought the EKWB situation into public view. A Slovenian Labour Inspectorate investigation followed. By the end of 2024, key personnel had left and the company was in freefall.
GamersNexus publishes "EK is Imploding."
The investigative report alleges months of unpaid wages, unpaid contractors, and unpaid suppliers. EKWB acknowledges much of what is reported in a video statement by Edvard König.
Cited: GamersNexus video, PC Gamer.
Slovenian Labour Inspectorate opens an investigation.
Slovenian labour authorities open a formal investigation into delayed salary payments to EKWB employees.
Cited: Tom's Hardware.
Senior staff departures.
Several senior staff leave EKWB during this period for other companies in the cooling and components space.
Cited: Tom's Hardware.
GamersNexus publishes "How 4 People Destroyed a $250 Million Tech Company."
The third major investigation reconstructs the management decisions and operational failures that led EKWB into crisis. The video establishes the framing used by most subsequent coverage.
Cited: GamersNexus video.
Continued operational decline.
Through the remainder of 2024 and into early 2025, EKWB's webshop continues operating but with deteriorating fulfilment and customer-service performance. Customer-paid orders accumulate without shipping; these later become the legacy-orders dataset published on this site.
Phase 3
Brand recovery
On 3 March 2025, LM TEK, d.o.o. assumes the exclusive license for the EK brand and web shop operation. EKWB, d.o.o. continues to exist as the legal entity servicing the legacy debt.
LM TEK licenses the EK brand.
09:00 CET
The use of EK brand, operation of the ekwb.com webshop is assumed by LM TEK, d.o.o. The EKWB, d.o.o. legal entity remains in existence to service the legacy debt, financed by brand-licence royalties from LM TEK's ongoing sales.
Cited: The FPS Review, KitGuru, ekwb.com.
Last order date in the legacy window.
The last pre-paid consumer order on the EKWB d.o.o. web shop legacy window covered by the Outstanding orders report is dated 10 April 2025. Orders after that date were placed on the LM TEK shop and fulfilled or refunded under LM TEK's operational standards and falls outside the legacy dataset.
Salary obligations and government tax debt serviced.
Approximate date
All outstanding wages owed to employees and former employees, and all outstanding tax debt to the Slovenian government, are paid in full. The exact closure dates vary by individual debt instrument and are recorded in EKWB, d.o.o.'s internal ledger.
Peak customer obligation documented.
The customer-debt registry reaches its documented peak: approximately €300,000 in pre-paid but unfulfilled orders across approximately 1,100 individual customer records (before bulk payment-provider refunds — including the PayPal cohort below — reduced the active queue to the 543 orders tracked on this site).
Source: internal records.
PayPal cohort refunded.
519 orders that had been paid via PayPal — totalling approximately €130,000 — are refunded in a single processed batch from EKWB d.o.o. funds released by PayPal, not from LM TEK funds.
Source: internal records.
Phase 4
LM TEK period
Throughout the second half of 2025 and into 2026, LM TEK rebuilds the operational layer to provide EK-branded products to the market — supplier relationships, customer service, inventory, channel distribution. The phase ends with the public launch of this transparency site.
Supplier debt restructured.
EKWB d.o.o. restructures its bank debt and the majority of its supplier debt under long-term repayment plans agreed individually with each counterparty. Some critical supplier debts are settled outright using a combination of asset sales and external financing. The detail of these arrangements will be published under the Financial health and legacy obligations cluster once legal review is complete.
Operational rebuild.
LM TEK launches the webshop, customer service infrastructure, warranty processing, supplier network, and inventory to a steady-state operating condition. Channel distribution for EK brand, dormant during the EKWB crisis, is re-established.
10,000th business-to-consumer order shipped under LM TEK.
LM TEK ships its 10,000th direct-to-consumer order, marking one year of operations. Distributor channel sales are operational and contributing alongside direct B2C.
Mark Tanko returns as CEO of LM TEK, d.o.o.
Mark Tanko, who led EK from 2013 to 2017 and subsequently established the Corsair Hydro X custom-cooling lineup, returns to lead LM TEK, d.o.o. and the EK brand as CEO.
Transparency surface built.
LM TEK builds the transparency site as the public-facing layer over the operational data. The first dataset to be made transparent is the legacy customer orders queue, followed by customer service performance metrics.
Public launch of this site.
The transparency site is published alongside the press announcement of the new leadership. The first Update — the launch-baseline methodology note — is published on the same date.
The Updates page is the ongoing record.
From this point, material changes — new data snapshots, corrected figures, resolved obligations, and newly published metrics — are logged on the Updates page. The timeline is a fixed historical record; updates are the living layer.
Last revised 29 May 2026.