- Original Poster
- #1
Hi all, hoping I can get a bit of advice on here, I’ll try and keep it fairly short. So myself and my brother started a ltd company 2 years ago manufacturing garden products. Things on the whole have gone reasonably well in terms of growth/customers/reliability and quality etc, but this last few months we’ve run into a few problems financially.
When we started the business we found it very difficult to get any decent funding. And so with start up/growth etc we are about 50k in debt to short term high interest loans and credit cards. This was manageable but my wife has been very poorly most of the year which has had a bad effect on the business, and also our communications company left us without communications for over 2 months when we moved to a bigger premises due to total incompetence. No phone line, no email, no card machine! This hit us hard also.
A debt company was quite forward in trying to make us bankrupt and made it sound really straight forward. I’m sure it isn’t and we are very keen to continue trading. It isn’t a gimmick idea and we believe it is a viable business but for the high interest/payments we are now struggling to pay during a quiet time of year in this business.
We haven’t taken anything out of the business other than a small wage, and not even that recently. No property, no vehicles, no dividends. We are just two brothers trying to earn a living.
So I wondered what everyone thought, I have just read about the spongebob plan? (Although that wasn’t the reason for my post) does this seem a plausible fit? And what might that entail? Please don’t think I’m looking for an easy way out, I’m just keen to do something about our situation.
Worries about any insolvency or bankruptcy etc is that my brother has given a personal guarantee on one of the loans of around 25k. And also we do not want to lose our timber supplier, who up to now we have kept up to date with, but normally always around 5k owing on our account month to month.
Our stock held would not be of high value to a liquidator due to the nature of the products we manufacture. Also we drop ship many of our newer products that we are adding, which has been a success but we have only just started this and it will be spring before it really takes off.
Much of the loan was spent on rent and initial stock, advertising, tools etc. our turnover doubled in the second year, but still recorded a loss mainly due to high repayments.
We are expanding our range, and the new premises gives us a great chance of success, but we are just struggling due to a few things out of our control this year, and a notoriously bad time of year right now.
We are vat registered and up to date with all that, have full sets of accounts etc.
Anyway I think that’s more or less where we are at, any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
When we started the business we found it very difficult to get any decent funding. And so with start up/growth etc we are about 50k in debt to short term high interest loans and credit cards. This was manageable but my wife has been very poorly most of the year which has had a bad effect on the business, and also our communications company left us without communications for over 2 months when we moved to a bigger premises due to total incompetence. No phone line, no email, no card machine! This hit us hard also.
A debt company was quite forward in trying to make us bankrupt and made it sound really straight forward. I’m sure it isn’t and we are very keen to continue trading. It isn’t a gimmick idea and we believe it is a viable business but for the high interest/payments we are now struggling to pay during a quiet time of year in this business.
We haven’t taken anything out of the business other than a small wage, and not even that recently. No property, no vehicles, no dividends. We are just two brothers trying to earn a living.
So I wondered what everyone thought, I have just read about the spongebob plan? (Although that wasn’t the reason for my post) does this seem a plausible fit? And what might that entail? Please don’t think I’m looking for an easy way out, I’m just keen to do something about our situation.
Worries about any insolvency or bankruptcy etc is that my brother has given a personal guarantee on one of the loans of around 25k. And also we do not want to lose our timber supplier, who up to now we have kept up to date with, but normally always around 5k owing on our account month to month.
Our stock held would not be of high value to a liquidator due to the nature of the products we manufacture. Also we drop ship many of our newer products that we are adding, which has been a success but we have only just started this and it will be spring before it really takes off.
Much of the loan was spent on rent and initial stock, advertising, tools etc. our turnover doubled in the second year, but still recorded a loss mainly due to high repayments.
We are expanding our range, and the new premises gives us a great chance of success, but we are just struggling due to a few things out of our control this year, and a notoriously bad time of year right now.
We are vat registered and up to date with all that, have full sets of accounts etc.
Anyway I think that’s more or less where we are at, any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
