UKWL, What Happened?

No doubt you will have seen that UK Whitegoods Limited has very sadly entered into administration, we would like to explain why this has happened and what will going forward.

 Firstly we can only apologise to anyone that is put out by this, it is obviously not the outcome anybody wanted and we are as sad about it as anyone.

Next, it is essential to understand that UK Whitegoods (UKW) and UK Whitegoods Limited (UKWL) are not the same things. Some of the how and why of it all at least.

UKWL is the commercial side of things it is standalone and used purely for commercial operations, that it was specifically formed for.

Way back when UKW was little more than a pet project and spares were being dealt with as an add-on module to the original CMS platform, they were being handled by CES in Exeter with the intent then, as it always was, to help people. We were never running it as a full blown business to make large profits from.

But, in 2004 we were, as many will recall, approached by Proctor & Gamble to run training and a bunch of other things but this meant employing people, requiring a VAT number, company registration and so on to do that. And so, UKWL was born in order to do that.

We all thought it’d be a flash in the pan for a few years at best and then things would go back to how they were as it wasn’t a long term contract.

So UKWL for the store was set up as the “operator” of the store but not the owner of it.

But one thing led to another, the online store, ISE, Amica… just a bunch of stuff and some of it we should likely have never gotten into but all this solidified the need for UKWL.

And then we were sort of in a rut for years but slowly we whittled things back down till it was just the online store, we didn’t do anything else of any note.

Fast forward to June of 2023 we were served with a winding up order from HMRC over unpaid PAYE/NI and corporation tax that our previous accountants, Milliken & Co had repeatedly assured us that we did not owe. They had supposedly dealt with the matter but it turns out they clearly hadn’t which led to the order, out of the blue.

Whilst we did satisfy the order and cleared the debt it meant taking out a significant level of finance (for UKWL at least) unexpectedly and that has impacted profitability since then.

This, in turn, caused suppliers to reduce credit limits and allow less leeway, leading to further financial pressure.

From there, it was only a matter of time before the likes of seasonal sales dips caused more issues, and the situation reached the point where the company’s closure was the only real option.

We did speak about selling the business along with the sites etc but that didn’t pan out.

It is sad and the end of an era but, it is what it is.

Moving Forward

UK Whitegoods (UKW) remains unchanged.

The main site, forums, trademark, all the IP etc including for the store is privately owned and always has been since the inception of the website. That is not changing.

Some things will require to change obviously but for most users of the sites, other than the store, there will be no changes.

Existing Store Things

Sadly we are locked out of this, as in any existing orders and transactions. We cannot help with them at all we’re afraid and we’re really sorry that we won’t be able to help with anything on that front.

As to any returns or warranty things, sadly we won’t be able to touch those either as it has nothing to do with UKW as an entity and only UKWL could get to those and they effectively no longer exist.

All we can do is that you contact your card provider/bank etc to seek recompense.

We are really sorry about this but it is the way that these things work and, even if a new operator is appointed for the store it is extremely unlikely that they will take any responsibility for anything that went before they took it on, which is the normal practice in such scenarios.

Online Store Future

The structure of UKW however does allow for us to see a new operator for the store which we are doing. 

Whilst we get a new operator for the store it is unable to accept orders as there is no operator in place to process any transactions.