Why Am I Still Trying to Make this work?

[WotchOotErAPolis]

Been running a business for 2 years, that does personalised gifts.

We now have £12 in the bank and I've just done a quick expenses tot-up of how much we've subsidised the business from our personal accounts over the last quarter [and this is only the ones I have recorded so far!] - £500+

I have just booked two xmas fair slots for which I will need to spend a further £150 for stock to show, which will have to come from personal monies.

We do half a dozen orders a month right now that nets us £120, after paying royalties etc. This effectively pays for the overdraft fees and payments to credit card machine use. That's all.

The advert so far has shown no ROI whatsoever. I have never sold at a fayre and have no reason to believe I will this time.

For all sorts of legal reasons, we have to keep going to try to make it work. We have 3 directors, but I am the only one who works F-T on this [the others are my DH who has a FT job in IT that he has just spent the last 7 days working virtually 24hrs a day on, and the other is a 'Non-exec' ie she does nothing]. We also have an ex-director, who is the majority shareholder, with whom we have no contact.

Please tell me why I'm doing this and why I should continue? More to say but got to take kids to school! Part 2 coming soon!

Update!

Just when you think it can't get any worse - DH spoke to the 3rd Director [eventually] on Thursday. I had already closed our order book the previous Saturday at our retail outlet, to effectively stop any further business coming in. He said he would speak to the 3rd Director on the Saturday as I did inform him of our financial situation [we have yet again exceeded our overdraft].

She agreed to close [after 2 previous attempts by me over the last 12 months asking her and DH to agree to close, nothing has effectively changed so why has she suddenly agreed so quickly?] and we have a meeting set up in an Indian restaurant with her husband present for wed of this week. He is not a Director and I am not happy that he will be in attendance, nor am I happy to have a meeting like this in a restaurant! I have told DH this and he just says 'well, she's agreed to close so its just a meeting to agree the steps we need to take to close in the most cost effective way].

I have now sent DH a list of evidence justifying our closure and have started listing all the monies we have subsidised the business with.

So far, I have only looked at txns from March 2013 and already I have spotted £9,300 of monies going from an old [but still active] personal account into the business and this doesn't even take into account the fact that I have recently been 'reminded' that all payments for our website provider have been made for the last 2 years from this account!! DH has been told of this and immediately took all the keys for the account upstairs [he's working at home today] and told me he'd look at it himself.

WHY?!

Do I start filing for divorce now or wait until after the meeting because right now, I would be happy to resign as a Director right now and go pack his suitcase!

I am sole trader and a longish-term member of the federation of small businesses, and I can assure you that I am entitled to every benefit that comes with membership.

As a limited company with 4 directors you are much 'bigger' than me yet you say you were mis sold the membership as you aren't big enough . They aren't interested in turnover, I've never been asked, so that's not a qualifying factor either.

I attend their meetings regularly and many of the others there are also sole traders. Are you sure its the FSB that you joined?

Anyway on your meeting in the restaurant. Its just madness isn't it? You have the idea for a business to start with a friend as a cottage industry. Your DP fancies himself as a company director so sets all that up with other shareholders but they all leave you to do all the work.

Just tell them ALL that you are no longer prepared to put all the work into a company that takes 3 orders a week, and that if you are not putting the labour in then there IS no business and you WILL be folding it.

Had our extraordinary directors meeting and agreed to cease trading last Wed. All very amicable as it turned out!

Last question from a futures point of view - we have a mailing list of over 1,000. Given that we may conceivably be able to get private business from some of these, how do we handle eg a last "we've closed email?" and what could we put on the website to say that we've closed in order to keep any options open??

Glad it's all over.

You could just put on the website "for any enquiries contact..."