Tuesday 30 December 2008

Happy New Year, enjoy while you can!

Happy New Year!

So, here is my last blog of 2008, I guess most won't read this until 5th January when most people are back to work and facing the dark days of January. I hope you had a good break, a relaxing time with too much food and drink and now realise, like me, that some exercise would be a sensible idea!

Over the week since my last blog Christmas has come and gone, sales have started, many retailers have failed with many more teetering on the brink.

Retail disaster over Christmas? If you need to close non performing retail outlets, consider Pre-Pack Administration or company voluntary arrangements.

This last fortnight saw fashion retailer USC pre-packaged through administration back to previous owner Sir Tom Hunter; Whittards sold to a private equity company; Zavvi enter trading administration; Officers Club in a pre-pack; Adams on brink of Administration and so on.

There will be many more, today I took a call from a distribution company, its biggest customer? TNT, it was doing most of it's work as a subcontractor to TNT and now it has told them there is NO WORK for the foreseeable future as the TNT depot and order book is virtually empty!

Big name retail failures take the headlines but this small Manchester company won't survive January without work, the MD will probably lose her home and the staff their jobs.

This is the flip side of the big failures and over the next 3 months more than 300,000 people will lose their jobs, as a result of the crash of 2008, in SME companies.

Mind you having been to the "January" sales on Saturday the question seems to be "recession what recession"? Or are people just buying bargains and now, and will not spend unless retailers give them a big discount in future? Time will tell.

Once again happy new year to one and all.

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