Trade Signs UK’s debt mountain revealed
New light has been shed on the demise of a Hertfordshire trade sign manufacturer in the summer by a former employee of the firm. Trade Signs UK went into administration on July 18th, leaving unsecured creditors debts of more than £725,000, the staff unpaid, and many unhappy customers and suppliers.
Tuesday, 22 Nov 2016 12:13 GMT
Trade Signs UK’s Matthew Driver has not commented on the demise of his former firm and the reasons for its large mountain of debt that was left
A significant number of the firm’s staff, excluding the managing director Matt Driver, were given a life line by Signs and Screens Limited, a new firm owned by businessman Anthony Kleanthous the chairman of Barnet FC.
Considerable ill feeling was caused by the collapse of Trade Signs within the industry due to the way the firm was managed with serious accusations made against Driver. A former employee of Trade Signs, which wishes to remain anonymous to protect his employment prospects, has also told SignLink that something was seriously wrong within the management team during his time at the firm.
He said: “When I started working at Trade Signs I thought it was a front, because I couldn’t work out how a company that functioned that way could make money. I was employed on the production side, but there were problems with decision making in the management area, which seemed insurmountable.”
When I started working at Trade Signs I thought it was a front, because I couldn’t work out how a company that functioned that way could make money”
The former employee also says the management did not take any notice of ideas to make money and to improve efficiency, which he had been hired to make. He also claims they would lie to clients over the delivery of jobs and he felt something bad was going on over the way the firm dealt with its scrap waste metal, purposefully scrapping signs with small errors that could have been easily rectified. He says he also discovered Driver had problems with previous companies and had “dissolved them when they were no longer useful” or had upset suppliers.
According to the source, shortly before July 2016 an investment package was announced to the staff and the workforce were told the company had been sold and there would be a cash injection in July 2016. However, the deal never materialised and the firm ceased trading, with staff being summarily told they were out of a job.
The administrators David Oprey and Elias Paourou of Hove then contacted Kleanthous and he agreed to a rescue package that would see the staff taken on by Signs and Screens Limited along with the acquisition of its material assets, as he was keen to break into the digital screen market. Co-director Haylee Benton was then taken back on to temporarily administer Signs and Screens, but in a lesser role, and has now moved on from her post being replaced by operations manager Dan Oliver.
According to Kleanthous, the company was not what he had been told it was in his dealings to buy the firm earlier that summer from Driver, as it did not have the digital signage technology he was interested in purchasing.
However, he has emphasised that new company Signs and Screens, which he is sole owner of, has a completely different business culture from Trade Signs, and has managed to provide employment for the hardworking and blameless former staff of Trade Signs UK. It currently remains at the former firm’s site in Tring on the Icknield Way Industrial Estate, but there are plans to move it to a new location in the near future.
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