[00:01.592]Well, I now know to take all this talk about the importance of communication skills seriously.
[00:07.280]I used to think it was all rather woolly,
[00:10.105]but when you've seen the damage misunderstandings can do.
[00:13.672]I suppose the board was a grouping of people with such strong backgrounds individually
[00:18.512]that each of them expected to be top dog,
[00:21.216]and that it was perhaps inevitable
[00:23.088]that they'd clash over what direction the company should go in.
[00:26.817]Anyhow,
[00:27.465]it looked very grim for a while but,
[00:29.601]in the end,
[00:31.056]two of them took the pretty sizeable payoffs they were offered and moved on.
[00:35.264]From our point of view,
[00:36.656]at least it saved us from the prospect of the group being split up
[00:39.616]and the shares sold off.
[00:41.232]We were all extremely glad to see the back of that particular episode in the company's history.
[00:47.521]I know there's quite a trend to constantly reviewing your sourcing in the search for cost savings,
[00:53.776]but it was crazy to move over to such an untried firm.
[00:57.056]The trouble was we were getting nearly all our parts from them,
[01:01.353]so everything was leaving the factory here with faulty components,
[01:04.873]with appalling results.
[01:07.112]We should have listened to the consultants,
[01:09.184]but on this one we thought we knew better.
[01:11.416]It got so bad that predatory offers were being made for the division,
[01:16.320]and we had to think hard about how to save the brand's reputation.
[01:20.313]Raising fresh capital through new shares was the right way to go
[01:24.185]and enabled us to cover the losses we made in sales.
[01:27.704]