Evesham: Staff and customers speak

By last Monday Evesham's website showed the firm to be trading as GeeMore Technology Ltd t/a Evesham Technology, but Austin was not making himself available to comment on what was going on at the Vale Park HQ.

Many of you continued to speculate over what was going on. At one point there was even a suggestion that bailiffs had turned up at Evesham stores:

They were definitely bailiffs at my store, the bailiff said, "I'm a bailiff". He showed us his bailiff credentials, and when we asked him what was going on he said, "I dunno, I'm just the bailiff." He was either completely wrong about his profession or somebody is lying! We didn't like to question him, he was over 7ft tall.

El Reg finally heard from Austin later that day. He told us that bailiffs had never been present at the stores and that instead staff had confused the administrators with bailiffs. This comment led one observer to tell us:

Yes ... everyone was in fact wrong... they were not bailiffs. They were Umpalumpas Employed by Mr Richard "Wonka" Austin to run his Chocolate erhhh Computer factory.

In many years time, there will be a promotion, where Austin puts a gold ticket in a PC box. If you get the golden ticket, you win a trick to AustinVille.

One customer lamented over Evesham's passing:

How sad to hear of the demise of Evesham Technology. There was nothing better on a rainy Sunday afternoon to drive down to the factory shop and treat myself to a spanking new monitor or a flat panel telly. Or to sit at home and marvel at the bargains at Lowestonweb.com

Am I now expected to deal with a load of faceless multi-nationals or amateurish cottage industry companies? I enjoyed the banter with the Evesham staff as we filled in the finance applications. (They did ask ridiculous questions but it was all part of the fun!) Then to come home with my whatever it was, safe in the knowledge that it had a free 3 year warranty.

Last night I had a dream I was shopping at PC World. No, not a dream, a bloody nightmare! Would I get out without being sold an extended warranty? Thankfully I woke up in time! (No pun intended!) But having felt relief that I was only dreaming, the harsh reality hit me that Evesham, at least as I knew it, was no more. I feel like crying.

By last Tuesday Austin was insisting that it was "business as usual" even as the GMB union turned up at Evesham's gates to show its support and demand action for redundant staff. Unsurprisingly perhaps, many of you disagreed with Austin's tone:

My business is struggling, I need to get rid of all the stock which is worth money before the administrators come in. Anyone want to set up a business, I'll sell you the stock for a pittance, then when it's all done we'll buy my business back trading under a new name.

This way there won't be any assets for the administrators to sell so my loyal workforce of many years won't get their greedy hands on any redundancy money.... sound familiar Mr Austin?

On Thursday we reported on one ex-employee's decision to register the Geemore.com and Geemore.co.uk names as a website for Evesham staff to stay in touch via a forum.

Interestingly, the new bosses of Geemore didn't have the foresight to register the domain themselves, but not all of you were convinced that it really mattered that much:

Errr....do you think maybe they didn't bother registering it because its just a temporary holding name whilst Evesham Technology Ltd changes to something else? Get real guys - this happens all the time in business. They didn't register it because they don't want it and rightfully so; Geemore is a rubbish name.

I wish you all the best in getting the monies you're due, and hope you all find yourself back on your feet as soon as possible.

By last Friday we were reporting on Austin's impressive U-turn. The Evesham founder and chairman had been blaming the firm's financial demise on the government's withdrawal of the Home Computer Initiative (HCI) scheme.

But in April 2006 it was a very different story with Austin telling Channel Business magazine: "Fortunately for us we have our feet in lots of different ponds. We are not totally dependent on HCI; it is only 12 or 13 per cent of our turnover. It is really not going to cripple us."

Quite a few of you pondered over this assertion:

Richard Austin has foot in mouth.

While another observed:

By and large Evesham suffered the same fate as a number of British Builders by trying to take on the big boys at their own game. Evesham could not achieve the economies of scale that firms such as HP and Dell enjoy. This automatically put Evesham at an huge disadvantage.

Evesham should really have looked to finding a niche market for themselves where economy of scale is a less telling advantage. One thing that is shining through is that Evesham were most likely relying on HCI far more than Mr. Austin was prepared to admit. A stance that implies that Evesham were in trouble a long time ago and that HCI was possibly viewed as a white Knight to shore up an already compromised business model.

Never the less 150 jobs have been lost and yet again its the same old story of British management incompetence.

We'll continue to follow developments at Evesham. In the meantime, if you've have anything you want to tell us about the firm, drop us an email via the byline at the top of this story. ®