Norfrost / Ebac - British Company / BBC programme

[CoolHands]

Did anyone watch that bbc2 programme 'Digby Jones The Troubleshooter' the other day? It was about Norfrost which is a british family owned company who wanted to start making chest freezers. (already make dehumidifiers successfully). To be honest they were shocking. I was shocked. When I see a company like that it just seems crazy that they can a) make money and b) survive. I can only assume it's because they've got a big bank balance left over from their glory days that they managed to fund their venture and now is presumably becoming successful in that new area. But frankly they hardly deserve to. (Is my bah humbug showing much?)

anyway, worth a watch. Still on iplayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0426vpq/Digb...

http://www.norfrost.co.uk/

[Alex]

What did you find shocking? The MD had a lot of drive and ambition. I wish them success.

[CoolHands]

the poor planing. Buying foam machines they had no idea how to use. A warehouse empty for getting on towards a year...etc

[C Lee Farquar]

Norfrost was the company they bought, they are ebac.

She picked the whole production line up for £250k so IMO not a big deal if it didn't all work straight off. A more 'modern' company could have spent that on management time, consultants etc and lost the deal with the receivers or had similar delays implementing.

[V8mate]

CoolHands said:

Did anyone watch that bbc2 programme 'Digby Jones The Troubleshooter' the other day? It was about Norfrost which is a british family owned company who wanted to start making chest freezers.

No it wasn't. It was about Ebac - a British family-owned company - who decided to buy Norfrost, a company which had gone into receivership. They then kept the Norfrost name going for their new freezer division.

[jammy_basturd]

I thought she paid £1m for the company, of which £250k was for the machines? We never did find out whether they all worked...

[ShortShift811]

V8mate said:

No it wasn't. It was about Ebac - a British family-owned company - who decided to buy Norfrost, a company which had gone into receivership. They then kept the Norfrost name going for their new freezer division.

Correct. Don't want to go into how, and I haven't seen the programme, but I know a little about Ebac; they're an already successful dehumidifier manufacturer who saw and took the opportunity to branch out into a related market. AIUI the success of Ebac isn't entirely dependant on the outcome of the Norfrost acquisition.

[V8mate]

ShortShift811 said:

V8mate said:

No it wasn't. It was about Ebac - a British family-owned company - who decided to buy Norfrost, a company which had gone into receivership. They then kept the Norfrost name going for their new freezer division.

Correct. Don't want to go into how, and I haven't seen the programme, but I know a little about Ebac; they're an already successful dehumidifier manufacturer who saw and took the opportunity to branch out into a related market. AIUI the success of Ebac isn't entirely dependant on the outcome of the Norfrost acquisition.

Correct. The programme said that Ebac was a successful company, but had taken a gamble on branching out into the associated (but different!) world of freezers.

[mr_spock]

I saw it, and found it interesting. However, it IS telly, so they did the usual thing of picking on a couple of themes and followed them throughout the programme: market research, and the production line. I found the issue of growing a family business to be the really interesting part, but that was covered quite sketchily. Anyway, not a bad bit of TV compared to the crap my daughter's watching at the moment.

[megaphone]

I saw it, I'm surprised they kept the Norfrost name, Ebac is a good brand, I would have rebranded the freezers with the Ebac name.

http://www.norfrost.co.uk

[C Lee Farquar]

I agree. And push the British built, family run etc.

I wonder what market research on the brand Norfrost would have thrown up. I didn't know they were a British firm, to me the name suggest Norway.

Edited by C Lee Farquar on Monday 28th April 13:57