Spongebob said:

My accountant would most certainly not have filed any accounts showing a sudden £40k overdrawn DLA.

Did yours?

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So your accountant would've filed false accounts?

If the company has already ceased trading why is your accountant putting together any accounts? Who is going to pay him for this work?

You say the company has reserves of £35k but no cash. I don't understand.

It certainly isn't "chicken".

The biggest regret most directors of companies closing down have is that they didn't do it years earlier!

mahad said:

You might not need to register for VAT everywhere yet. Look into IOSS, it covers EU shipments under €150, but your product likely exceeds that. For higher-value items, the customer becomes the importer of record, meaning they pay the VAT/duty on arrival. You just need a reliable freight partner who can manage that handoff cleanly.

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Our product is the best part of £2,000.
In my view asking the customer to pay VAT on arrival (DAP) is a sub optimal customer experience.

Bette rto have an all in price they pay at checkout on the website.
It can be done!
Websites like Rafa-Kids.com automatically adjusts its 'all in price' depending upon where the customer is asking for it to be shipped to.
Their website automatically adjust the VAT and duties as well as has shipping rates per country baked in.

I do want the domain, but I need some time and space to use it to it's full potential.

If I've identified the most obvious buyer it will take some serious $$$ to make me change my mind as the project involves 2 'A' list celebrities.

What does the software actually do?

Start by defining what you want the shower gel to feel & perform like (clarity, foam level, slip, scent, pH range, any claims like moisturizing, gentle for sensitive skin, etc.). That way when you reach out to manufacturers, you can send them a brief spec sheet rather than a vague idea. It makes it easier for them to match you with the right chemist or formulation team!

Thread's 10 months old so you've probably sorted this by now, but for anyone else finding this via search:
You need proactive tax planning, not just compliance. I switched to WR Partners for exactly this issue. They do quarterly reviews and suggest optimizations before year-end - capital allowances, shareholder extraction modeling, timing strategies. Big difference from compliance-only firms

It is difficult to suggest the matter be pursued, but it is because people know or suspect matters will not be pursued that debts go unpaid and for much larger sums as well.

Once you start to drawdown from the pot the allowance drops to £10k

Ziggy2024 said:

I wouldn't amend for that, just include in the current year as a under / over provision.

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I am inclined to adopt this approach since the prospective tax burden of £665 doesn't strike me as particularly significant in the overall scheme of things.

Happy New Business Year too @HFE Signs although a bit early.

We still need to celebrate New Business Year Eve this coming Sunday, then all sit around with hangovers on Monday 6th from all the 'celebrations'

It's a low-risk pop-up incubation model, and one of the more effective ways to lower the barrier to entry for retail entrepreneurship. It let's small operators test real market demand, build confidence, and gain customer exposure without the typical financial exposure. The main trade-offs are sustainability and selection effects.

As it’s been 6 years since thread was started and the OP has never returned we will probably never know how things turned out.

Time to close this thread.

I'm based in China, and there's a cardboard box factory right downstairs from me. If you have any custom packaging needs, feel free to reach out — I can place the order for you here in China.

Porky said:

Hi Carl,
Interesting, might just chat further although my primary issue is finding a trusted partner in Japan that could sell the product - that's probably the bigger issue especially as i don't talk Japanese....

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You could try finding a warehouse in Japan to handle dropshipping for you, or a dropshipping warehouse in China would work too. The shipping time from China to Japan for international parcels is quite short.

I'm a Christmas and Halloween supplies manufacturer based in China. I'm quite interested in the products you mentioned — how about we give collaboration a try?

MOIC said:

My tuppence worth . . . . .

If you decide to source from Alibaba, then you really need to devote time and effort into sourcing the right supplier for you.

It may be that you'll need to communicate with 20 or 30 suppliers to find the right one and the process can take 2 to 4 weeks to establish if they are the right fit for you, this is before you request and compare samples, from perhaps a shortlist of 3.

A few pointers:

1. Never request or respond to an RFQ.

2. Due diligence on the company that you're speaking with.

3. Always request samples from at least 3 suppliers to compare quality, components & packaging.

4. When you have identified (what you think) is the right supplier for you, then the fun starts. . . . contract, samples, amendments, pre production samples, payment terms, production timelines, quality control, export documentation, packaging, branding, warranty, faulty items, after sales service, shipping options & costs . . . . . .It's doable, but you need to put time and effort into it, otherwise you'll get a (very) poor supplier.

Alibaba now, is not what Ailbaba was like 10 years ago, it's worse!

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That's exactly right. A large number of trading companies are spending hefty sums duplicating storefronts, all to get their products in front of your eyes. Meanwhile, the actual factories rarely have the bandwidth to reach out and deal with you directly.

Ah sorry. I seen xero and importing details etc and thought that sounded like more of everything.

Closing thread. OP is clearly a time waster

Been meaning to write this post for a while as it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently through my work in the bathroom industry.

A few years ago if you mentioned acrylic shower panels to most homeowners you'd get a pretty dismissive reaction — "isn't that just cheap plastic cladding?" was a pretty common response. The reputation of the product category was honestly not great and I think that was largely down to the flood of thin, low quality PVC panels that dominated the market at the budget end and gave the whole category a bad name.

Fast forward to now and the landscape has changed almost completely. The panels coming through from quality manufacturers are genuinely impressive — 8mm and above acrylic with surface finishes that photograph so well you'd genuinely struggle to tell them apart from high end tiles in a lot of cases. Marble effects, concrete finishes, botanical prints, even licensed artwork designs. The design range has exploded.

What I find really interesting from a business perspective is how the customer conversation has shifted too. A couple of years ago most of the questions we'd field were "are these as good as tiles?" — now it's more "which brand and thickness would you recommend?" The product has clearly crossed some kind of credibility threshold with the mainstream UK consumer that it hadn't reached before.

A few things I think have driven this:

— The grout cleaning problem never went away and people are genuinely fed up with it
— Instagram and Pinterest have exposed a much wider audience to well-executed panel installations
— The quality of the top tier products has genuinely caught up with what sceptical buyers needed to see
— Installation time and cost savings are increasingly understood and valued

From a trade and retail perspective it has been a significant shift in how we talk about and position these products.

Curious whether anyone else in the trade or running businesses adjacent to home improvement has noticed the same thing — or whether you've had different experiences with customer perception in your area. Also interested whether anyone has thoughts on where the market goes next — more premium finishes? Larger format panels? Different substrates?

Would genuinely love to hear different perspectives on this, particularly from people working in different regions of the UK where the uptake might be different.

Really useful tool, thanks for sharing this. Just plugged in my postcode and it pulled everything through nicely - good to see the relief breakdown laid out clearly rather than trying to work it all out from the council's letter.

Quick question - is there any way to pull in the floor area data as well? Would be handy to see the m² that the valuation is actually based on, so you can sense-check whether the VOA's got it right without having to dig through their site separately.

Also, I've got a small unit in SE15 that doesn't seem to come up when I search. It's definitely on the VOA list so not sure why it's missing. Might be worth a look.