"After receiving countless calls and emails from skip hire operatives throughout the UK regarding the demise of Top Triangle/ Top Skips, The NSHA contacted Mr Mark Atwood. Here is his statement: "
Stop The Rumour Mill – This Is What Really Happened To TopTriangle
TopTriangle Ltd was the company behind Topskips.com and the magazine, The Skip.
It was started in 2003 as a family business by Mark and Katy Attwood and Katy’s sister Louise Malpas. Since then, it generated over £10 million in business for skip hire companies across the UK.
On March 6th it went into Administration under very sad circumstances.
Since March 2008, the company was under attack from an internal fraud that did not get identified until February 2009. The fraud is estimated to total more than £250,000, but because of the way it was done was undetectable by the company, except for £57,000 of fraudulent, cloned and stolen cheques that were traced back to pawnbrokers and cash generators across Manchester in October/November 2008.
Because of the cashflow “hole” that was apparent, but untraced, during the third quarter of 2008, the company was forced to take on Invoice Finance services from RBS. RBS never understood the way the company worked and changed the goalpost on a monthly then weekly basis until, in mid-February, it became apparent that the company would not be able to pay it’s ever patient suppliers on time.
The company then took advice from Insolvency Practitioners who advised to put the company into Pre-Pack Administration and buying it back through another Limited Company.
This decision was not taken lightly, as Mark Attwood explains: “We had worked our arses off for six years to build up a fantastic reputation and offer amazing services to both our customers and suppliers. The whole thing came crashing down at such a speed that we simply did not want to let all our hard work fall into the hands of another business that would never care about it like we do.
“We were offered a way to keep the idea going and persuaded by the Administrators that most of our suppliers would trade with us again going forward because this would be the best way of them getting any lost funds back. As we had never been through an Administration before we had no idea what the fall-out would be like. In fact, we had no idea what any of it would mean to us and our supplier – people we worked so hard with for years to build up a good reputation.
“If I had ever had any intention to damage any skip hire companies, not pay anyone (we actually borrowed £130,000 over Christmas to keep the thing going), I would not have splattered my face all over the magazine and the internet.
“It was absolutely gutting, but we were on a fast-moving train and didn’t know what else to do.”
Mark and fellow directors took the decision to use a pre-existing limited company they had set up a few years earlier for a wine venture that never happened.
They also decided to withdraw from the company, believing the installation of a new Managing Director would serve the company better. Through bizarre and unlikely twists of fate and circumstance, an investor appeared over the horizon who appeared to be interested in taking on Mark and Katy and the whole Topskips.com concept and getting it back to where it was.
This meant Mark and Katy needed to be reinstalled to running the business, and getting it out of the hospital.
It is now trading strongly in difficult circumstances with the past two months being spent on installing rigorous financial controls and systems to make similar fraud and theft impossible to happen again.
If you were one of the companies that were stung by the Administration, Mark and Katy was to offer your heartfelt apologies for the suffering these circumstances have caused you.
Mark says, “The worst thing about the whole experience, apart from some of the threats we have had on our lives, has been the fact that we had to leave some companies in the lurch financially. A lot of these companies we had personal relationships with. I want to publicly say sorry to all of those people – and to extend the only thing we can extend: the chance of doing business with us again under a new regime, but with all the best of the staff and marketing from the old company.
“As for the readers of the magazine that have been annoyed by the Administration – I again apologise and I ask you to consider all we have done for the image of the skip hire industry, with positive appearances on national TV, radio and press. Not to mention the fun and humour we have brought to everyone.
“We are back here, and we are here to stay. We offer every skip hire company that wants to work with us again a guarantee of lots of business and regular payment terms. Life has given us a second chance to make this business work – we hope you can too.”
