This was his post on Facebook. Seems he was reducing his risk in preparation of the forthcoming economic downturn.
hey guys . bit of news , bit of sad news . we basically going to finish up building new DOTs, at least for the moment . wen exactly we finish up, i haven’t quiet decided. we are not running out of money for DOT, this is not the reason , so don panic : )
decision made a few days ago. putting things in place now .
all current orders will continue as planned , we have notified existing customers , so no changes to builds , will continue and be completed.
at this stage , we have over 30 quotes ‘on the go’. so i think we’ll continue to take orders possibly up to Easter. but after Easter we won’t take any further DOT orders.
Warranty and servicing will continue as before. we will make provisions for ongoing warranty, repairs and servicing. simple upgrades also is fine, to existing DOTs.
we will consider DOT retro fits up until Easter, after that , large DOT retro fit conversions ie to WUHT’s i’m not sure.
so, anyone keen on a DOT, still some chance to get an order in. have about 3-4 weeks to place a deposit.
in business there are always many reasons why things happen, but there has been a couple of things happen recently that forced my hand and resulted in this decision.
once we have finished our last DOT , in 2-3 months time, i plan to move our dispatch / retail up into the DOT shed. they need more room and DOT has about twice as much room.
Drawers and drawer fitouts are very busy, they also need more room so they will move into the old dispatch area, giving us more flexibility in handling more fitouts .
so basically, DOT is a very difficult business to run. takes up much of my time and energy. we are struggling with low sales for a while now, for several reasons , and also the DOT factory struggling to make the profit needed to pay some loans coming due next year. drawers and retail are going great, need more room, and if i didn’t do this change i’d have to build another big factory extension, which i don’t really have the energy for atm.
so that’s what’s happening over the coming weeks / months . it is possible, after things have changed around and settled down, say in 6 months time, we may reconsider DOT, possible we get the trailer base fabricated in Newcastle and we just do the fitout, as we did for the first 25 DOTs 8 years ago : )
i spent the day talking to staff , then we notified existing customers , now i’m letting u guys know : )
best to set things straight , so everyone knows exactly what’s happening.
we built 400 Australian made camping trailers. i think that’s a pretty good achievement : )
any questions i’ll try to answer best i can if u have any. thanks guys , L