Star Trek fans with open orders from ANOVOS, the longtime Star Trek high end costume licensee who has been frustrating its customers with lengthy fulfillment delays (to the point of class-action lawsuits) face new complications as the company appears, at first glance, to have closed its doors.

But as with everything in the ANOVOS story, it may not quite that simple.

TrekCore has learned that key staff have moved on to other professional opportunities, and now the ANOVOS website is now automatically redirecting to a new company: Denuo Novo, who launched as a subsidiary of National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) on August 18.

(NECA, who owns Loot Crate, do not themselves have a spotless record themselves in the eyes of Star Trek fans in recent years.)

Unfortunately, however, while Denuo Novo has announced that they have taken over ANOVOS’s Star Wars license, and will begin fulfilling backorders for customers who have purchased Star Wars merchandise, they have not been clear about whether Star Trek will follow.

“Denuo Novo has the license for Star Wars replica costumes, high-end collectibles, [and] the like — which ANOVOS used to have — and as part of us taking on that license we are fulfilling the backorder left behind from ANOVOS,” said Mark Van Ohlen, Denuo Novo’s Brand Licensing Manager, during an interview on the Jedi News podcast in late August.

And while Denuo Novo declined to comment to TrekCore about whether they were directly pursuing the Star Trek license, their team has been responding to some former ANOVOS customers’ requests for information.

“We would love to be able to add the Star Trek license so we can help those customers with their orders,” a Denuo Novo customer service representative told StarTrek.com contributor Ryan T. Riddle by email, recommending that fans waiting on ANOVOS Star Trek products “reach out to your credit card company about a refund on your Star Trek order.”

“People have asked numerous times: are we ANOVOS? We are not,” said van Ohlen in his podcast interview. “We are new, but we do have their liability that we are fulfilling as we move forward with this [Star Wars] license.”

Denuo Novo’s customer service team insists that is not a successor company to ANOVOS, nor did they buy what remains of ANOVOS. But that has not stopped fans from asking questions, not least about the choice of names for the company which strongly implies that it is an ANOVOS successor.

From Denuo Novo’s own website:

denuo (dē-nuō): once more, a second time

novo (noh’-vō): to make anew, revive, change, alter, invent.

And while this all seems cut and dry — in that Denuo Novo has taken over the ANOVOS Star Wars license, ANOVOS is no more, and Star Trek fans will have to wait and see whether Denuo Novo picks up the license for any chance of seeing their orders fulfilled — it turns out that ANOVOS itself is not completely defunct.

When TrekCore reached out to ANOVOS’s customer service email — which is still active, as of this writing — we were told that the company is undergoing a reorganization and that “this lengthy, multi-month expansive change is almost complete and will herald a new day and re-affirmation of our objectives in the fulfillment of your order.”

Their support person indicated a definitive update would be provided in September — but when pushed further about whether Denuo Novo or ANOVOS would end up fulfilling orders placed by Star Trek fans, ANOVOS indicated that was still under discussion. (ViacomCBS declined to comment on the matter.)

“[All] I know is that discussions are ongoing between ANOVOS and Denuo Novo regarding those items,” ANOVOS customer service representative told TrekCore. “Once there is something more definitive (hopefully before end of this September, as previously indicated) the pertinent details will be announced, thus lending greater clarity and a path forward.”

That is surely small comfort to Star Trek fans, including multiple members of the TrekCore team, who are waiting for orders for many products to be fulfilled from the company — but it may signal a realistic path forward for Star Trek fans hoping to get their orders fulfilled, and that not all hope is lost for ANOVOS’ Star Trek customers.

To our knowledge, ANOVOS took orders they have not fulfilled for products going as far back as 2016, including but not limited to the following products:

• • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Niners” baseball jerseys
  • Star Trek: Beyond Starfleet survival jacket
  • Star Trek: Discovery captain’s and officers uniform (though a few captain’s uniforms were sent to customers earlier this year)
  • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Captain Kirk’s bomber jacket and undershirt
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock Captain Scott’s bomber jacket and undershirt
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan “Monster Maroon” uniforms
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Landing Party field jacket
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation Premiere Line uniforms
  • Star Trek: Voyager standard Starfleet uniform jumpsuit
  • Star Trek: Discovery phaser rifle with display stand
  • Star Trek: Discovery hand phaser with display stand

Of all the items ANOVOS has taken pre-orders for since 2018, only the Star Trek: The Next Generation Captain Picard jacket from “Darmok” was entirely fulfilled. The First Contact-style Admiral’s jacket was shipped to customers last year, but they were told the belt was still on backorder and would be provided later. It too has not yet been shipped and now in limbo.

In addition, it is unclear if any of the studio-scale replicas of the USS Discovery, USS Shenzhou, or USS Enterprise — listed for $9,000 each — were ever fulfilled. Marketing communications from the company, which are now inaccessible due to the website change, showed pictures of various stages of the manufacturing process for these items, but it is unclear if they were ever completed.

Hopefully, a deal can be worked out such that ANOVOS pre-orders for Star Trek items will be fulfilled, but for customers who have been waiting years for their products and are now faced with this significant upheaval and unclear answers from both ANOVOS and Denuo Novo, it is probably a good idea to manage expectations for what may be possible going forward.

And if you can, contact your bank or credit card to see if there is anything they can do to reclaim your money.

We will continue to provide updates if there are new developments that signal a path forward for Star Trek customers of ANOVOS.