To be worried at the amount of companies in financial difficulty already

[Handiies]

Oasis and Flybe isn't a huge surprise. But now we have virgin and even Mumsnet saying their future is very uncertain without a bailout.

I can't see this ending anytime soon and worry the knock on affects will be huge. What happens when furlaugh ends and if lots of companies just can't continue trading? Lots of places were having a hard time anyway and this could be the end of them. Then what Amazon, Google and apple to be the only companies with money and will hoover everything up? It seems so worrying that we'll soon have little choice but to buy from tax avoiding companies that weld so much power

I assumed MN was just one person at home with some moderators.
I’m surprised that anyone would think that. Have you not seen the job ads for staff on the site?

I maybe being dense but how is Mumsnet in trouble if it's online based and doesn't rely on people buying in a shop like retail?
How has corona affected mumsnet and has mumsnet said they are in trouble?

They rely heavily, almost exclusively, on advertising income. No point advertising if you can't sell your product so a lot of companies will have cut their advertising spend.

I’m surprised that anyone would think that. Have you not seen the job ads for staff on the site?

But what do the staff do? It's just a very basic message board.

I thought if anything it was like Kylie cosmetics - a billion dollar company but only 10 employees

If I were an advertiser, MN would be a great bet. Women are in charge of a lot of the non-discretionary household spending (food...!), probably even more so in these times. But it must be shockingly run if it needs 100 employees (even if some of those are part time) to get by.

I’ve been on a couple of otherwise successful forums (anyone remember Hitched?) which died almost overnight because of a single crap decision by an owner. Exactly the same could happen to MN - it’s not like it’s difficult to set up a forum and all it would take is a couple of big posts on here to point people in the right direction. Facebook is simply not an acceptable substitute for this place.

That said, you could run the MN forums on a shoestring if you had to. If I were MNHQ I’d do everything I could to keep them going - the audience is the only useful product.

@Handiies I'm with you - I never realised it actually had employees rather than moderators, and no, I haven't seen any job ads because I don't go anywhere else other than the forums. Maybe if I'd thought about it, I would have realised it was naive but tbh never really considered it as this is just somewhere I waste time so didn't think about its business model.

Eg, marketing - ie, getting advertisers to stump up for ads. Or techie jobs in getting the site to run properly or improve it.

I do wish people would stop saying lockdown is worse for the economy than letting covid run rampant. With sickness rates doubling every few days there would now be millions of people sick and off work. Schools were shutting because they couldn't staff them, my work had about a 75% cancellation rate. Lock down is about saving the economy as well as saving (hundreds of thousands) of lives.

Tax does not have to be put up in the short term. Austerity was ideological sold as bullshit economics. The government has the ability to increase debt as it needs to during hard times. Its been proven that the countries who spent rather than did austerity after 2008 recovered more easily. A booming economy will find it easier to repay debt.

That's a very fair point Eskarina1. It's flawed logic to think that there would have been no economic impact of letting the virus run out of control. We can only estimate how quickly it would have spread and what the rates of sickness and death might have been but they would have been significant. Society, business and commerce would not have just trundled on quite happily.

I've no idea if the economic impact would have been better or worse than lockdown and I don't think anyone could reasonably guess but surely it's better to try and manage a crisis than to just put our hands up and see how it plays out without any intervention. The real question is whether it could have been better managed and I think the answer to that is yes.

I worry more about the recession following the pandemic than about the actual pandemic if I'm honest.

Eventually, what will happen is that new businesses start and grow where existing ones have had to close.

After a few years we will have a comparable amount of bars, restaurants etc but there will be different brands.

It could well put the final nail in the coffin of "the high street" though as everything moves to online shopping or large retail parks.

I'm not afraid of change, the world is continually changing anyway. I AM afraid of the next few years and how many people will suffer before this mess rights itself again.

I'm not surprised mumsnet generates the money it does. It's demographic is likely extremely valuable to advertisers.

Unless this advert revenue has dropped off a cliff (which I doubt) or the loan is enormous then it should be OK.

Like with every other downturn, some companies won't come through it but most will and if there is a demand for a service someone will provide it.

I run a small company making and selling hobby goods for outdoor use that are used at events.

We've been trading for 7 years and it was a thriving, growing company, with a very small team of 6 employees.
Our sales are all online but takings have understandably fallen off a cliff just as our busy time was starting.

Most of our very small team is furloughed and just myself and my partner are working part time fulfilling the tiny amount of work that is coming in.
We still have rent and utilities to pay on our work premises and although we are very grateful to have received the government grant of 10k, that will only pay the overheads for around 3 months.

Once that runs out we can keep the company going until around September with what is left in the company account, and then we will most likely have to shut down. However it's very unlikely that sales will suddenly restart at the level they were at when this virus hit, it may take years to get back to where we were in terms of turnover and we can't continue with no income.

There is no money to pay ourselves so we are living off the savings which we had managed to scrape together as a house deposit as we were hoping to buy a house in the near future.

I am very worried for the future and sad that all the hard work we and the team have put in to grow the company that we all love is probably going to be all for nothing.

I understand why people don’t get that Mumsnet needs 100 people but I genuinely do not understand why they think it can be run with just some free moderators. Tech stuff (way more expensive than you think even if you personally don’t think the front end features are as high tech as they should be), marketing, advertising sales, account management. Justine wants to earn something. HR that comes with having to employ anyone (regardless of whether you have that in house or not), accounts. It all starts to add up. Users that think this should cost nothing baffles me way more than trying to square the 100 staff away (I do run a partially online business so see the costs that from the outside you wouldn’t imagine exist).

On the other side I don’t believe Mumsnet advertising revenue has completely fallen off a cliff - the online baby product market certainly hasn’t

Unless this advert revenue has dropped off a cliff (which I doubt)
Advert revenue will have dropped off a cliff, though. No one wants to advertise if consumers can’t buy what they are selling - things, experiences, holidays, days out, meals in restaurants, etc.

I'm so sorry to hear that English rose, you sound like one of the worst companies affected. But it seems like you've ran it well in order to have savings for now. So the chances are in your favour to come out the other side.

Eskarina1 schools were closing down due to self isolatarion rather than being sick weren't they? Sweden seems to be keeping schools open ok. I think wil more testing and tracing it can be controlled.

Marriedtoapenguin I agree, I think advertising rates will have fallen. But not ceased to exist. MN must have been skating on thin ice to be affected so quickly.

Exactly the same could happen to MN - it’s not like it’s difficult to set up a forum and all it would take is a couple of big posts on here to point people in the right direction. Facebook is simply not an acceptable substitute for this place.

Agree Facebook groups aren't a forum. There was a copy of Mumsnet set up but it's like a pound shop. I think if netmums change their rules lots of people will move there.

@handiies I said because they couldn't staff them, which will have been because of self isolation (due to being at high risk). The impact of sickness wouldn't have been felt until later.

Sorry yes my post wasn't good, I was agreeing with you

For every product that people are not now buying , there will be an increase in something else, home craft, diy, etc

Parents are spending more on keeping children occupied at home and so I don’t see why advert revenue should decrease - just the products might change.

For businesses, I think keeping up a presence and a important. Filling your site with articles relating to products- anything that keeps your business name in peoples minds.

Parents are spending more on keeping children occupied at home and so I don’t see why advert revenue should decrease - just the products might change.
But they won’t be expensive products that won’t necessarily be advertised, or if they are, the companies won’t pay that much for adverts.

I reckon it’d be contracting marketing budgets and removing what is not essential. SM such as mn is a bit icing on the cake and there’ll be many in SM relying on advertising revenue seeing it cut in the same way.

The only companies that will go under are ones that no one needed in the first place . Towns and cities are full of restaurants and coffee shops ( mostly very mediocre ones too).It’s almost as if we don’t have kitchens in our own houses .
I would like to see more emphasis being placed on encouraging / developing companies which actually produce something. Things we need not just things we want . We’re constantly encouraged to buy crap we don’t need with money we don’t have .
I can’t personally get worried about airlines going under either . As a nation we fly too many miles every year - I wouldn’t object to some kind of rationing system for air miles . I’d you don’t use your allocation one year you can roll it over for a max of 3? years or sell your quota to someone else .
As for mumsnet I’d hazard a guess that the most prolific posters are actually employed by mumsnet to stir things up and attract visitors . There’s probably someone employed to tip off the newspapers too . The average wage is 3.5 k a month? And strangers provide the content ?

As for mumsnet I’d hazard a guess that the most prolific posters are actually employed by mumsnet to stir things up and attract visitors . There’s probably someone employed to tip off the newspapers too . The average wage is 3.5 k a month? And strangers provide the content ?

Lots say this, but is there any evidence? As it's all public the daily mail can lift things here without asking.

I would like to see more emphasis being placed on encouraging / developing companies which actually produce something. Things we need not just things we want
Like what? Need and want have blurred boundaries.

Daisypond
My school teach a topic called Money Matters to the year 4s in PDMU lessons . They understand the difference between need and want . Google will help if it’s really too much .