When we took over the business back in February/March it was one much bigger business that needed to separate it's logistics business in order to survive. We knew that and why the savings created were imperative because without reducing the budget this company was going under.
Nearly 6 months on and we have done what was required, but the once parent company is our major client and which I find more worrying they are still not financially sound. We cannot just discard them to the wolves, but at the same time cannot afford their financial troubles to bring us down with them. This is a delicate scenario because I should not really know their financial details yet I managed to find this out this week.
We have had another meeting with out online business partner which is business number 2 and this will be ready to go live possibly by the end of this month. The pressure is on and this has to happen like yesterday so we catch all the hot spots like Black Friday and so forth.
This on it's own will not be enough and more income needs to be found of which I have a few ideas that would help remove some of the financial burdens if we faced a worse case scenario. The main thought right now is we need to be prepared for the just in case as this may be nothing or it could be seriously bad.
Looking for some positives from this I would then take over the parent business if it closed down and start rebuilding immediately. There is some real value in here and this actually may not be such a terrible situation if they did fold.
We have the trampoline business which when run correctly is able to support both businesses with the only difference now that would require importing entire sets besides the rolls of material. Again this trampoline business is highly profitable with the only downside it would need some serious investment which would involve a few hundred thousand dollars immediately. They current sales tell me this would be a few months worth of stock generating a good 30-40% profit so this is a no brainer.
The punch bags business which we already have would now mean we control the entire part of this business which then means we make double profit, but again would require investment of buying the skins and would forgo the idea of making them from scratch for now. This again would pay for the current business costs which would be warehouse, transport and the wage bill.
Knowing all of this I am still concerned, but not overly concerned if you understand where I am coming from. The business would be better off if our parent company folded even if it meant quite a bit of upheaval short term. I don't wish this on anyone because losing a business you have had for over 30 years would be heart breaking. Maybe we end up teaming with the founder of this company which would also be an option that I would not rule out. This is a good business that has been poorly run with bad business decisions on who is doing what and they keep repeating the same bad things.
Whatever happens my family is obviously rather stressed, but I cannot view my thoughts just yet and we need to let this play out and I am relaxed with both scenarios.