What Is Happening at The Sutlers Stores?
It is worth pointing out that there has been a statement to this effect on this website since March of this year (since removed and replaced by this page). However for the benefit of genuine customers who would like to know exactly what happened rather than read ill-informed gossip and speculation, here is a statement from the former directors; Nancy and Richard Beardall which has been written to hopefully prevent any further half-truths being posted on re-enactment forums.

‘Global Financial Situation ’
As we all know the last 2 years have seen many large High Street retailers go into liquidation (Woolworths to name but one), so why anyone should assume that a small company with a turnover of around £500,000 per annum such as ‘The Sutlers Stores’ would be unaffected is difficult to comprehend.

‘The Sutlers Stores’ along with countless other recently failed companies were the victims of a disinterested bank who would not help in rescheduling the company borrowings, forcing us to pay back large sums each month despite the fact that our revenues had fallen as our customer base tightened its belt. Income from sales to re-enactors had been in decline for years and we had been cutting staff since well before the big recession hit.

Sales to the ACW community in the UK have been in decline since 2003, following the significant drop off in the number of people taking part within the larger Re-enactment Societies.

Since 2003 the re-enactment period that we have supplied themost to is Napoleonic, sales to this period are predominantly for tailoring, in turn this would be followed by Civilian Regency, Civilian Victorian/Western, Zulu/Boer War, Indian Wars, WW1, ACW, WW2 and finally Ladies Wear.

If ‘The Sutlers Stores’ had to rely on sales of tailoring products to re-enactors it would have shut down in 2004/5, thankfully sales to Museums, The Armed Forces, Film, Theatre and Television kept it going.

Over the last 4-5 years we have sold far more ACW kit to the USA than the UK and this despite the unfavourable Sterling/Dollar ratio.

The problems started with us supplying the huge numbers of blank firing Pietta guns that we did through 2006 - 2008, it caused a massive drain on reserves and cash flow which resulted in the borrowing previously referred to. We were ordering in excess of 300 - 500 guns at a time which involved making up-front payments to Pietta in the region of £50,000 + at a time.

The bank would only agree to short term lending for us to stock the guns as it didn’t want to be seen to be associated for ‘ethical reasons’ with a gun dealer, even if they were only blank firing guns.

Undoubtedly we could have struggled on a bit longer in the hope that things would get better but as the recent General Election has proved they will inevitably get worse before they do improve, hence the decisions we took were the right ones for all concerned, as without a source of new investment ‘The Sutlers Stores’ would have had to close down completely and all the monies paid for all orders of all types placed would have been lost by all the customers.

We wanted to prevent this, so with great difficulty we sought out a new investor and eventually were lucky enough to find one. Our main concern was to protect existing customer’s interests, so after lengthy negotiations the company will be restarted with a new trading identity, which as we are sure everyone knows is common practice these days.

Nancy is no longer a director of the new Sutlers Company and has no involvement in the financial affairs of the business but she has been retained to manage it on a day to day basis. Richard was only a director of the company to "make up the numbers" but as anyone who has visited us in the last few years knows he has had no actual involvement in Sutlers since well before 2006.

In the final analysis, compared with the alternative, only a relatively small number of people were actually affected with monetary losses and these were some customers (not all) who had bought blank firers. Of these 99.9% have been personally spoken to and told how to claim the money back from their credit card providers, or how to make a claim against the Administrators; these claims may or may not be successful we can't tell at this stage. Anyone who ordered tailoring or any other sutlery products will have, or have had their orders fulfilled.

Summary - The Future
The investment into the new company has given ‘The Sutlers Stores’ a second chance, it is now financially secure and has no borrowings, however it won't remain open unless it performs to the targets that have been set. So unless you want to go back to the 'bad old days' of waiting over a year to get a badly made item of clothing or to finally get the wrong buckle instead of the one you wanted a year after you wanted it we would ask that you support the new company as you originally supported the old one!!

If you have any queries about this please just give us a call!!

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‘Westhill Studios’
Since April 2006 Westhill Studios Ltd was the name of the Limited Company that owned and operated ‘The Sutlers Stores’; it was always our intention to separate the two businesses and to set them up independently, however the recession beat us to it.

Westhill Studios connection to ‘The Sutlers Stores’ is that we share the same building and that is all. A history of how ‘The Sutlers Stores’ evolved into ‘Westhill Studios Ltd’ has been present on the ‘The Sutlers Stores’ website since 2006.

Westhill Studios were not experiencing any financial difficulties and now that it is finally independent has grown significantly.

Westhill Studios has built and manages approximately 600 websites for large and small clients worldwide.

No Westhill Studios clients were affected in any way by the demise of ‘The Sutlers Stores’ in any way at all.

Soskan Website
In answer to someone’s comment on the forum about updates being ‘behind’ on the Soskan website, this is because we are waiting to receive the updates to enable us to do them. As I understand it the membership has been asked to make contributions and to date none seem to have been forthcoming.

For the first time all the relevant parts of Soskan's web presence are properly organised, registered and all those details are now immediately available to the Soskan Executive Committee upon request.

The new website through its high ranking with Google is on average receiving over 3,000 visitors each month, approximately 30% of these are new people visiting the site, as a result the society is gaining many new members and also plenty of solid enquiries from potential sponsors, something that the old website never did. Link to PDF of statistics