New company buys Rolled Gold assets: decline highlights harsh conditions faced by importers.(Distribution)

Evidence of the tough market conditions facing the import sector has been provided by the descent of distributor Rolled Gold into administration.

Rolled Gold, which boasted on its website that it has expanded over the past seven years to become the UK's largest parallel importer and listed as one of the Sunday Time' 100 fastest-growing businesses, went into administration on March 12. The business assets have been sold to a new start-up.

Corporate recovery specialist Tenon Group has been brought in to advise on the situation. Tenon administrator Christopher Delasalle, who is now working at Rolled Gold's Slough site, says the company has had "quite a bad three or four months", which resulted in the running down of stock. He adds, "The warehouse had lower and lower stock and the position was untenable."

The precise reasons for Rolled Gold's decline are not clear, but the import sector has been hit in recent months by the rising value of the Euro against the pound. The company built its business from the late Nineties by acquiring cheaper product Dora the Continent and supplying it to UK-based retailers. Because of the strength of the pound, European prices allowed it to offer stocks at well below standard UK album dealer prices.

One distribution source says, "Distribution is a tough business to make money in. When the pound is strong importers do well, but when the pound went down I'm sure they weren't making anything like the money they wanted. It also might have a knock-on effect on the whole business, because a lot of suppliers will be exposed."

Delasalle explains flint he and his team looked at the option of a stock sale, but the value that would have been realised was much lower than that for selling the company as a going concern. "We were invited by the directors to try and find a way of saving the business, how to maximise the ...