3DM Worldwide - Superstock??

andrbea

What IP-based companies invariably fail to realise is that there is only one meaningful function in a company and that that is the sales function. Without sales, no matter how good your ideas or products, you haven't got a business.

As a result, whilst keeping a close hold on the management of IP, which they understand and are, no doubt justifiably, proud of, they farm out the sales function, willingly give up control of it completely, to companies whose vested interest is in their own sales rather than, in this case, TDM's. They are therefore reliant for their cash flow projections on other peoples' forecasts of activities over which they have little influence and no control. As a result, the way of the world being what it is, the sales forecasts are hopelessly exaggerated; the cash flow projections woefully inadequate and the company is continually looking for more cash.

From the start, IMHO, Brooks and Aylmore had no intrinsic interest in sales per se. PA is a plastics production man through and through, and KB a lawyer into tricky-dicky deals which would be great for him and his fellow beneficiaries as and when the revenue flowed.

Problem is, there was never, and is not even now, someone whose prime responsibility is for driving revenue into the company, a difficult function to graft on post-hoc in my experience. Without that, they will find it difficult to break the current cycle, always assuming of course, that there is something there rather than smoke and mirrors, which has yet, in my view to be proven conclusively.