A hard lesson for others to avoid.
We started out in the early 80's working for a mojor north east retail chain, first just changing ballasts in a few of thier stores.
After a year we were contacted by thier own construction manager and asked to be thier construction electricial contractor which we readily agreed to.
It started out small doing one complete store renovation every 10 months or so. ALl work was done on a guess estimate basis and payment was on a 90 - 120 day level.
Eventually the renovations got to be 4 to 6 stores a year with amounts of over $300,000 owed us.
Banks were willing to loan money on projected income so we stayed fluent until the checks started comming in slower and the amounts on the checks less.
To make a long story short the retailer filed for bankrupcy owing us $324,000.
Our mistake was we never had any formal contract, we relied on the banks money to bring us through until the money came in and we relied on them for 90% of our work.
We have since regrouped and are doing very well but it wat a tough lesson to learn.
If you don't have enough business knoledge to expand get it don't rely on field experience for it.
As you see it can be very costly.
We started out in the early 80's working for a mojor north east retail chain, first just changing ballasts in a few of thier stores.
After a year we were contacted by thier own construction manager and asked to be thier construction electricial contractor which we readily agreed to.
It started out small doing one complete store renovation every 10 months or so. ALl work was done on a guess estimate basis and payment was on a 90 - 120 day level.
Eventually the renovations got to be 4 to 6 stores a year with amounts of over $300,000 owed us.
Banks were willing to loan money on projected income so we stayed fluent until the checks started comming in slower and the amounts on the checks less.
To make a long story short the retailer filed for bankrupcy owing us $324,000.
Our mistake was we never had any formal contract, we relied on the banks money to bring us through until the money came in and we relied on them for 90% of our work.
We have since regrouped and are doing very well but it wat a tough lesson to learn.
If you don't have enough business knoledge to expand get it don't rely on field experience for it.
As you see it can be very costly.