The online double glazing community on Twitter was awash with rumours and speculation a couple of weeks ago that Door Panels Ltd was on the verge of going over board. And indeed it turned out to be true. And it also turned out that for once, I had nothing to do with those rumours this time! I decided to sit this one out!
Yes, unfortunately another big name within the door sector has gone to the wall owing to the vicious economic climate that still exists. However, as we have been in recession for quite a while now and not likely to see any sort of growth worth talking about in the near future, I do think that there are some companies out there that should be doing more. More specifically, doing more to lower their debts.
Lets look at this on a personal level. I have two credit cards, both of which up to a couple of months ago had money owed on them. One of the them not so much, the other one quite a lot. Rather than prolong the repayments and watch the totals reduce in a dribble, I bit the bullet and paid them all off in one go. It wasn’t a nice thing seeing the bank balance shrink like that by so much, but I am now debt free and much more of the money I earn is mine and its one less bill I have to worry about.
Debt reduction is something which I think all businesses should be focusing on. If you look at all company related reports, the main advice which comes from them is that businesses should be doing all they can to reduce their debt and make it one of their main priorities over everything else. It is good advice. If things go quiet again, at least the burden of high levels of debt won’t be an added pressure.
On a personal level, recent studies have shown that like me, people have been making a real effort to reduce levels of debt on credit cards and outstanding loans. The country-wide level of personal debt has actually been on the slide since the recession really started to bite a few years ago. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for businesses and I think this is where they are going wrong.
As for Door Panels Ltd and the orders left behind, Phoenix Door Panels in Cambridgeshire has boldly stepped in to take up the slack of the left behind orders from Door Panels Ltd. If the business isn’t bought as a going concern as the company is forced to shut the doors permanently then jobs will be lost, always a sad conclusion for any business. Here’s hoping that the company is taken over and jobs saved.
DGB You are a bit late with this, tooling already gone and all of the other Door Panel Companies taking on new customers, and some without credit checks!
I know, have been busy! But I wanted to address the business debt issues with this one as well. I still think companies need to increase their efforts to reduce any outstanding debt wherever possible.
The majority of the time I do blame the bank managers; a while back a large window company in Doncaster went bust and when I spoke to the owner he admitted to simply guessing on his future projected figures. Therefore the company carried on as usual simply hoping that more business would come in, the bank kept bank-rolling them until the business was in a state of disrepair! They would have been much better off closing the doors 2 years earlier with a fraction of the debts to their creditors! However, if the bank wombles had done their job properly… Read more »