Another Crash! Accident Or Certainty?

With a 40 year trading history, Adelaide’s Truscotts Casual Living hit the wall this week with debts of “around $5 million”.  Were there any warning signs to the captain of this particular ship?

Well, you can read between the Receiver’s lines – “The records are unfortunately not in the most accurate state”; “combination of factors”; “some management issues” – and draw your own conclusion.

While the name has been around for 40 years, the current owners have only been at the helm since 2006, buying Truscott’s chain of seven consumer electronics stores out of  receivership at the time, then added Casual Living and 3 Retravision stores for a total of 14 outlets.

Blending families is a tough ask; blending businesses, accounting systems, cultures, teams and customer bases then presenting a unified face to the market is far tougher, and the process looks to have claimed another victim.

Could tough times be to blame?  They most certainly played a role, but in the same way that a drought culls weak plants and animals, an economic drought will do the same with businesses.

Drought Proofing Your Business

This is no time to be strung out, over-geared, highly-leveraged or stretched.  Now is an excellent time to be building up your bank; riding your boundaries to make sure that the customers you love and care for aren’t being poached or, worse, just wandering through the holes in your Customer Care systems.

Every product line should already have had the once-over to assess whether it’s worth carrying on board; every crew member should be aware of the extra effort that is required right now to make sure that the ship that’s paying their mortgage and car lease is in fine order, pointed into the seas and making strong way.  That may take a bit of business coaching on your part, but it will be worth it.

And the captain, well she better be looking as far ahead as she can to make sure that there are no rocks in the ocean ahead of them!

If you’re experiencing rough seas right now, it might be a good time to talk to people who’ve made business improvement their life’s work. A dash of business coaching via one of our business owner coaching programs might be the smartest insurance on offer at the moment. Please contact us for an obligation-free chat, and make sure you take advantage of the wealth of free business tips on this site.