120) The End of Ballard’s
During 1996 my boss, Di Ballard’s health began to fail. She was not feeling at all well and was having a lot of tests to try and discover the exact cause of her problems. She had had breast cancer a number of years previously and so we were all concerned that this was her problem again. We tried to keep our thoughts from Di but I suppose she was thinking exactly what we were. After many scans and tests and visits to hospital she was told that the cancer was now in her kidneys and she was advised to start chemotherapy. She did not want to have the treatment but she was told that there had been a great improvement since she had had it before. There were far fewer side effects and here was a good chance that she could be cured or at least add a good few years to her life. Her family rallied around her and did what they could for her. But as none of them had been directly involved with the business running the business was left to the three remaining staff, Lois, Dora and me . Di did not want to admit that she could no longer cope so did not really pass any authority on to any of us. We did the best we could, but without the authority to make some decisions that needed to be made things began to slip. Don’t forget there was a staff of eight when I had started there and now the same work had to be done by just three. At first Di would come into work as often as she could, she would take the books home with her and try keeping up to date when she was between treatments. Unfortunately it was not long before she could not even manage that. Her accountant employed a part time bookkeeper to keep the books up to date and we three carried on running the shop. We did the ordering, sent out accounts, stacked the shelves, cleaned the shop, served the customers and pretended that everything was going along well. Geoff was not well either and could no longer drive. As the Ballards lived fairly close to me I was able to bring them things they needed from the shops but the whole situation could not carry on like that and the business was, put on the market some time in 1998. We all thought that as the new owners would need staff and as Di was prepared to recommend us we had a good chance of keeping our jobs.
Jonny and I thought about buying the business but we did not have the money. We thought about borrowing it from the bank using our house as security but we were not sure enough that it was worth the asking price so did not pursue the idea.
Quite a number of people were interested in buying the business but no one came up with the amount that the Ballards wanted for it. I suppose they were all waiting for the price to drop when Di could carry on no longer. Eventually at the beginning of September we all received letters from The Ballards informing us that the business had been sold and that as the new owners were a family they would not require our services any longer. We would be handing over to them at the beginning of October.
The new owners came to see me and we arranged that we would start doing a stock take a week before the take over date. The actual owner was a young girl of 21. Her father was buying the business for her, as she was unable to find employment. She had no experience in retail trade or the stationery business but she had a very close friend who worked for one of the gift-wrap companies who was going to leave her job to help with the running of the shop.
Stock taking in a stationery shop is always a fiddly job, so many pencils, pens and rubbers to count but we usually did it with a lot of guesstimates, as it did not need to be one hundred percent accurate. As the stock was to be sold ‘at valuation’ when we did the stock take for the new owners they followed behind us and recounted everything over again and if they thought that the stock was a bit old they refused to have it included in the count. We tried to get as much as possible accepted, as we knew that it was important for the Ballards to get as much cash out of the deal as possible as there was some stock that they still owed money on.
In the final days of the count the new owners packed up all the goods that they were willing to accept and loaded it into their vehicles and took it away to their home. Then the next day they had a team of shop fitters come in and cleared the place out completely. Then they painted, put in new carpets and shelving and transformed it from a practical stationery shop into a fancy goods shop. It looked very attractive but it was a complete change and I would often meet old customers who would ask, “What have they done to Ballards?” True they stocked envelopes in 20 different colours but there were no manila window envelopes for businesses to send out their bills. They had pens of all sorts of different kinds of ink, with glitter or fancy smells but they no longer stocked carpenters’ pencils, lumber crayons, and mapping pens for drawing offices. They had decided to go for a different market but the sad thing was that they upset a lot of our old customers who knew that they could rely on us to order what ever they needed in the stationery line. We would always try to satisfy their needs but the new owners were not interested in that side of the trade. They sold lots of very pretty things and maybe they were right but it was sad to see the passing of an old type of shop with old fashioned service.
Jonny and I thought about buying the business but we did not have the money. We thought about borrowing it from the bank using our house as security but we were not sure enough that it was worth the asking price so did not pursue the idea.
Quite a number of people were interested in buying the business but no one came up with the amount that the Ballards wanted for it. I suppose they were all waiting for the price to drop when Di could carry on no longer. Eventually at the beginning of September we all received letters from The Ballards informing us that the business had been sold and that as the new owners were a family they would not require our services any longer. We would be handing over to them at the beginning of October.
The new owners came to see me and we arranged that we would start doing a stock take a week before the take over date. The actual owner was a young girl of 21. Her father was buying the business for her, as she was unable to find employment. She had no experience in retail trade or the stationery business but she had a very close friend who worked for one of the gift-wrap companies who was going to leave her job to help with the running of the shop.
Stock taking in a stationery shop is always a fiddly job, so many pencils, pens and rubbers to count but we usually did it with a lot of guesstimates, as it did not need to be one hundred percent accurate. As the stock was to be sold ‘at valuation’ when we did the stock take for the new owners they followed behind us and recounted everything over again and if they thought that the stock was a bit old they refused to have it included in the count. We tried to get as much as possible accepted, as we knew that it was important for the Ballards to get as much cash out of the deal as possible as there was some stock that they still owed money on.
In the final days of the count the new owners packed up all the goods that they were willing to accept and loaded it into their vehicles and took it away to their home. Then the next day they had a team of shop fitters come in and cleared the place out completely. Then they painted, put in new carpets and shelving and transformed it from a practical stationery shop into a fancy goods shop. It looked very attractive but it was a complete change and I would often meet old customers who would ask, “What have they done to Ballards?” True they stocked envelopes in 20 different colours but there were no manila window envelopes for businesses to send out their bills. They had pens of all sorts of different kinds of ink, with glitter or fancy smells but they no longer stocked carpenters’ pencils, lumber crayons, and mapping pens for drawing offices. They had decided to go for a different market but the sad thing was that they upset a lot of our old customers who knew that they could rely on us to order what ever they needed in the stationery line. We would always try to satisfy their needs but the new owners were not interested in that side of the trade. They sold lots of very pretty things and maybe they were right but it was sad to see the passing of an old type of shop with old fashioned service.
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