King of Knives – working through voluntary administration

02 September 2013

Retail expert at BRI Ferrier Antony Resnick was recently appointed as the voluntary administrator to the King of Knives homewares retail franchise business.

King of Knives is a 25 year old business but had been struggling in the tough retail climate. A decision by the bankers to withdraw finance forced the directors into voluntary administration.

The company continues to trade through voluntary administration with the hope that a deed of company arrangement will be proposed to creditors.

According to Resnick, “by trading we are preserving the goodwill of the business as a whole, preserving the prospect of continued employment for a significant number of the workforce, keeping the prospect of ongoing trade for suppliers alive and preventing the automatic closure of all stores which would negatively impact on the landlords”.

“Franchises will not be affected but we will have to close about 50% of the company owned stores so as to preserve the good number of healthy stores through carving out the unprofitable ones. The historical performance of stores has been a major factor in determining which stores to close”.

BRI Ferrier has a specialist retail team led by Resnick and was recently involved in the liquidation of the MotherCare Group of companies. “Given our ongoing exposure to the state of retail in Australia we maintain contact with many of the operators, landlords, bankers, suppliers and consultants in the industry which enables us to maximise the prospects for all the various stakeholders”.