gone bust!

[garretridge]

in my local tile market in bangor today and they have an upstairs rented out to a local company called jupiter bathrooms. They have been trading only eight months they had asked me back then to come work full time for them when they opened i declined thankfully because they went belly up the adminastrators were in today. It sad to see but seems to be a regular occurance at the minute!

[merlecollins]

Not nice to see mate.
8 months ago was a tricky time to start up such a new venture, but they must have thought it could work.....

[Dan]

Yeah times are still very tough for some. It's always not nice to hear but I think unfortunately we will hear of a few more firms in the industry struggling.

[brian c]

I agree,not a great time to open a new bathroom shop IMO.

[365drills]

We stock our kits in over 80 shops and branches UK wide. At the moment we are losing shops and retailers due to bankruptcy at the rate of at least one a month. It took me a lot of hard work (4 years) to get each those retail outlets set up to move our kits so when we lose an outlet for our product thats little bit less revenue each month.

Of course I feel sorry for the retailers and it does have a direct impact on our supply. And this year we lost four tile training centres.

On our website we have a form that potential NEW retailers can fill in with some basic details like a contact number and a postcode for the branch. We used to get about seven or eight contacts per WEEK from that four years ago. So over a year that's 200 leads from tile shops and plumbing merchants interested in adding our product to their range.

This year we have had the grand total of 10 contacts....

But its not all doom and gloom. In a way I am grateful we have had ANY contacts. We continue to promote in magazines, online etc so once we climb out of the recession we should be in retailers minds.

These next few years will see the survival of the fittest. For example for us if push comes to shove I can scale down production and staff and sell these from my garage!! Not quite there yet but there are a lot of companies who have borrowed a lot of money and they are feeling the pinch big time.

Lets hope we are all at the bottom and about to climb up.

[Sir Ramic]

I wish my local tile shop would sell your kits Richard instead of the rubbish they have now.

[365drills]

We have all the point of sale equipment they could need !

Actually thats another annoying thing that the Point Of Sale equipment costs us £60 per branch and so of course when they go pop another display heads for the skip. It takes two or three repeat orders from a branch for us to cover the cost of the POS.

Maybe its time to start charging a set up fee.


At £60 a time the POS equipment means somebody has to pay.
With bankrupcy now common is it time to insist for payment?

[hillhead]

I'd say yes Richard, times are tough out here.
You could tell them the price can be refunded after so many sales maybe? IE 60. Lol.
All bases have to covered now so sharp thinking goes a long way.

[kilty55]

definately build this pos price into your maerketing somewhere for the outlets richard imo.good luck

[365drills]

I think you are right Kilty. We may have to ask for either a bigger order (at the moment its £250 per outlet) raise that to £500 OR charge a premium on the first order to cover the cost of the POS equipment.

Shame really because its sort of a "knock on" effect. Retailers will charge customers. Customers will charge clients. Etc Etc.

One thing that DOES excite us is that our biggest retailer (Corgi) have asked for box sets of certain sizes. So we may well expand from clam shells to boxes.

Point here being that in a difficult recession you have to think sideways. If a customer wants somethign that you dont normally provide - DO IT !

I can only hope that each and every one of us (Manufacturer - Retailer - End User - Client) can each do our bit.