Garaged dot com - buy it?
Garaged dot com - buy it?
Author
Discussion

Frimley111R

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

264 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
(Firstly, if you don't know what I am on about look in the Speed,Plod and the Law section under Umair Bhatti.)

Not that I am going to but there is quite possibly a working business there which could someone could rebrand and restart. Is it a crazy idea or an opportunity?

Edited by Frimley111R on Tuesday 22 November 17:09

Muncher

12,235 posts

279 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Why would you want to buy a tarnished brand?

AndrewEH1

4,922 posts

183 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Muncher said:
Why would you want to buy a tarnished brand?
Yeah, that URL/brand is now worth next to nothing in the UK. Which is a shame because it's actually a good name.

CAPP0

20,881 posts

233 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Plenty of big-name entrepreneurs have bought failing businesses and turned them around. I don't know what percentage of his business came from PH (lots?) but particularly on here, if you bought it and said "right, it's me now, not him, this is how I do things" you should be able to get people to come back to the fold? After all, if they had a need for his services then, they presumably still do, so where are they going for that today?

MrReg

1,939 posts

252 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Muncher said:
Why would you want to buy a tarnished brand?
This!


22

2,867 posts

167 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Even on PH it'll have some value. With the search function as it exists, there's plenty of positive threads that'll show up.

"Under New Management"

Someone will nab that name when it pops up, likely without even knowing the history, and the limited exposure of the story certainly offers an opportunity.

Magic919

14,569 posts

231 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Plenty of free publicity in the beginning.

PoleDriver

29,606 posts

224 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Plenty of satisfied ex customers too, by the sound of it!

UpTheIron

4,058 posts

298 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
At the right price, definitely worth considering. The market will define the price...

I suspect remarkably few people will ever know the history. Just look at other businesses or individuals with horror stories about them, including advertisers here (no names) who continue to be in business and pay their advertising bills so you would assume it is worth it to them.

AyBee

11,347 posts

232 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
Looks like it was a decent business model and the demand was there; I'm still struggling to work out where the money went though, storage costs + time/effort costs = rent charged, what has he done so wrong to get so much in debt? confused

edc

9,675 posts

281 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
What exactly are you buying through? A website, leases, customer base? For a zero revenue business you'd have to get it nearly for free as most of t sounds like liabilities rather than opportunity ...

spikeyhead

20,565 posts

227 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
I worked for a while in a building that had half of it used for car storage. Theoretically it was profitable, however so many of his customers were late payers that it turned into a nightmare and he gave up with it.

0a

24,159 posts

224 months

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
quotequote all
It has value as a URL and that's it. A few £k, might make a good car broker website URL.

Frimley111R

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

264 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2016
quotequote all
edc said:
What exactly are you buying through? A website, leases, customer base? For a zero revenue business you'd have to get it nearly for free as most of t sounds like liabilities rather than opportunity ...
Well yes but it must have suppliers, location etc that could all continue running. essentially just changing the name or even keeping it, no different to any other business being bought out tbh, it just depends what is left of it but all those customers must be looking for somewhere knew to store their cars, assuming that they haven't already.

I did a quick fag packet financial calc: Assuming (only because someone estimated this) space for 200 cars and an average of 50% capacity and customers paying £25p/w storage (went down to £10 a week after a while iirc) then that's £15k p/m plus income from other storage of cars above that and valeting etc. Take off lease cost, staffing costs for moving cars around (they did airport parking I think?), admin costs, tax etc...

Look at me, I'm an accountant! hehe

jshell

12,106 posts

235 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2016
quotequote all
It went to the wall for a reason and the owner tried to dig himself out through fraud. Either he was on a permanent spending spree to keep up appearances, wasn't being paid on time or some other reason...

Frimley111R

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

264 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2016
quotequote all
Indeed, that would definitely need looking into but it could have been his other business interests that overstretched his garaged finances or a cashflow issue, payment issue that could be resolved. It sounds like he did a lot of the work himself which must have been hard.

AyBee

11,347 posts

232 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2016
quotequote all
jshell said:
It went to the wall for a reason and the owner tried to dig himself out through fraud. Either he was on a permanent spending spree to keep up appearances, wasn't being paid on time or some other reason...
Sounds a lot like there was something else going on in the background that was using all the cash...

jshell

12,106 posts

235 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2016
quotequote all
AyBee said:
jshell said:
It went to the wall for a reason and the owner tried to dig himself out through fraud. Either he was on a permanent spending spree to keep up appearances, wasn't being paid on time or some other reason...
Sounds a lot like there was something else going on in the background that was using all the cash...
Cristal costs! wink