Published
Mon, Jan 5, 2015, 11:09
- The former online music and clothing retailer has revealed the details of its demise, which saw 40 people lose their jobs last March.
Chemical Records has published a statement on its website that details how the company twice fell into administration before its closure in March 2014.
The music and clothing retailer made the statement on December 21st, 2014. Chris Ramsay, a former director of Chemical Records, says that, after a successful decade in online business, the company's growth stalled in 2010. Three years on, in May 2013, a dispute with their landlord led to the company entering voluntary administration for the first time.
Though Ramsay says he and his directors "screwed up" by moving to a new, bigger premises at a time when growth was stalling—"it was only our attempted growth that put us in a bad way"—he says the blame lies with the two companies handling the administration period, accountancy firm RSM Tenon and Barclays bank. Ramsay says when the company emerged from administration in September 2013, they "realised the extent of what RSM Tenon and Barclays had done."
A missed payment in February 2014 saw Chemical Records enter administration for a second time. A month later, Ramsay says, "all of the staff were informed that they no longer had jobs and the company was closed." This meant 40 people lost their jobs. Ramsay says Barclays and Baker Tilly, the accountancy firm that bought RSM Tenon in 2013, are currently "trying to pursue us into bankruptcy to claim back the money that they would have been paid by now."
You can read the statement in full here.