Evesham Technology goes into liquidation British computer maker Evesham Technology today told the majority of its remaining staff not to return to work on Monday because the company has gone into liquidation. The firm’s ex-chairman and co-founder Richard Austin sent an email to staff this morning informing them “things are very suddenly moving quicker than expected …
A fine place in its heyday - such a shame that this news has appeared today. My thoughts at the moment are with all the remaining staff members who survived the Company going into Administration last year.
I worked with them for many years, and have always considered the people there the best.
A sad story.
Another so-called PC manufacturer bites the dust !! They have traded on the fact that many people cannot put together a decent PC from the component bits and have no one to turn to for help and that PCs, then, were expensive things.
Now that PCs can be bought with the weekly bread and milk in Tesco, the bottom has fallen out of that market. Watch this space as more of them bite the dust !!
I have to echo Mike's words. I too Worked for Evesham (Micros). It was something / somewhere special. It is with great sadness that we mark its passing. Howevever I am afriad those days have gone ... the market has forever changed. We have massive internationals churning out PC's on wafer think margins. There is no real money in making or selling PC's.
When I worked in Evesham, we could get £3000 for an Amstrad PC2386, and that had a respectable margin of profit. Now we see systems fetching £200-300 plus vat.
Cheap PCs . . Great, however the world is a little less richer, without the Eveshams, or the other British Builders.
I suppose its like many other industries that have been and gone.
Sean
Yes thats right Tanuki the whole company went under because you had a couple of emails 4 years ago....
Anyway on a more serious note, Still finally the saga draws to a close and its put out of its misery.
Back in the boom years around the turn of the century Evesham was a very good company to work for, as the belts tightened and the IT market changed the renumeration was no longer competitive and working conditions started to become changed for the worse.
It has to be said that the middle management level also ultimately contributed to the failings.
Fortunately I left them well before the end when it was obvious (to me at least) that despite the cross fingers and hope for the best attitude of management that there was no future there, the way the management of staff was going it wouldn't have surprised me if someone told me they were timing the amount time staff spent on toilet breaks, made worse by the fact that with long serving staff leaving this often inexperienced people to fill the gaps.
I wish the remaining staff should they take up contracts with the new company all the best, and the same to those who weren't offered re-employment.
Evesham was once a great place to work for, its a shame it didn't stay that way right until the end.
Gutting to see what must be the end of Evesham Micros/Tech. Have worked there for many years and now am looking for another job. State of the industry indeed, we could never compete against the multinationals and people would rather pay less than get good ol' UK service I guess. Loads of great memories to take away, we really were part of something special and it will be sorely missed.
Ishkandar, you are a chump. It amazes me how people bitch and whine when they get a couple of emails, but do nothing when letters drop through their door. Never would I wish redundancies on hundreds of people and their families because I had to press delete - show some compassion.
People with a lot of money are crying out for something other than a £200 grey box with no support. Hand made cases, personal support, planned upgrades and backups, replacement laptops synched to the lost one. Encryption, format conversion for music, video, photos.
You pay over the odds in comparison to a dell or a tesco special, but these people (or rather their PA) can pay £500 for a courier swap out because it looks like £5 to them. Plus they end up tied to you like BMW and their servicing.
Hi All,
Evesham lives on, barely, but as a new company.
There were more redundancies on 4th, but the majority of the staff have been offered new, temporary 3 month contracts.
The remaining staff are very skilled, very good at their jobs, and should be able to carry the company onwards.
Technical support stills exists for Evesham's own customers, PCs are still being produced, sales are still taking place.
All that has happened is that the old company, which was replaced in august, has finally been disposed of.
and Evesham didn't. Dell are in the same position, being able to buy a PC with a reasonable specification in Tesco, which you can take away with you, is much better than paying the same price to an OEM and then having to wait for delivery and take a day off work to receive it.
I tried buying something mail order form both Dabs and Saverstore (correct incarnation ?), but neither would deliver to anywhere other than my CC billing address. Dabs even started demanding seriously personal information ! Neither got the business, I paid a bit more and went to a PC Builder a few miles away.
The world is neither richer nor poorer for the passing of Evesham. Remember Danny Di Vito in Other People's Money talking about the company that made buggy whips ? They don't make them now.
A large (mainframe) computer company almost went to the wall for the same reason, they thought that people would continue to pay ever increasing prices for the same stuff. Well documented in a book by Robert Heller, and well worth reading if you want a perspective on how not to do things.
Another large software company is following the same path, and will acquire the same fate. I mean, £370 for an OS, I ask you !
The comment regarding spam as deleting a couple of emails is ridiculous. I get 50 spam emails a day, most end up in the bulk folder, and I don't care how many are made redundant from spam generating companies. The sooner these companies are removed form the web the better. Oh, just to be complete, I am added onto the no marketing mail list, as well and have made a couple of complaints regarding the receipt of unsolicited unwanted commercial mail.
Companies are created, they thrive, they stagnate, they die.
There are still a lot of little computer shops run by one/two persons who will offer that kind of service for reasonable fees. They also give value-added services like advice and training. Eversham's business model is to slap bog standard bits together, stick on a fancy label and called it "manufacturing". There were no value-added services such as the local computer shops could give.
@Andy
When that business model went down the pan, Evesham, et al went the way of the dinosaurs !! Dell realised this not long ago and is trying very hard to move into the server markets with uncertain success. And where is Compaq these days ? And Evesham did not have even a tenth of their financial muscle.
So chump, I may be but I am a realistic chump. I'm not a woolly-minded jingoist !! As a previous commenter said, the problems began with the Evesham management and ended up in liquidation, whether you (or anyone else) wish it to or not !!
I suspect that their spamming emails may have had an effect. I have bought Evesham PCs and other stuff, and recommended them to others who have also been customers. Until I got the series of spam emails (on an address which was not one that they could possibly have known from my earlier purchases). From that point on I did no more business with them, and told other people the reasons. If they sent out millions of spam emails, maybe millions of us did the same. I suspect that had some part to play in their downfall. A pity that it takes so long.
Sorry. I am not the biggest fan of Eveshams Management and for sure, I dont like the way they treated their staff ... but to say they were spammers and good riddance ... is tosh!
I wasnt working there at the time of the SPAM Wall, however from my understanding, I believe it was a case of a mistaken approach. Something they were cained for .. and something they did not repeat. I very much doubt that any of the high and mighty here have not had any mistakes in their lives ??? He who is without sin.
The company lost its footing, for many reasons, from poor management, to the HCI being withdrawn at little or no nottce .. to the margins on PC's drying up. However they never ran short of clients. I am sure ex staff will back that up. People still lined up to buy product, it was just a case that the profit was not their.
The same things has happend to other uk buiders, who did not send out SPAM.
Evesham Facts.
1) They employed some of the best in the industry.
2) They produced some knock out products
3) They had a brand and reputation secound to non (distoryed August 07)
4) The had a poor management structure and never made the true leep from small/middle sized business into the larger corprate world. Everyone seems to agree the top managers messed up and stopped listening to those lower down.
It doesnt matter what Richard Austin and his mates do now ... the Evesham Days are gone. The brand and reputation is gone - I dont think the events of last August could have been handled any worse, if someone had set up to do so.
My advice to Austin ... go off into the sun with your money. As for the staff that are left .... I am sorry but the real Evesham died last August, let go and swim to shore. I like so many others left Evesham a long time ago .. and found bigger better brighter future elsewhere. Good luck
So has Evesham dead and buried or not ? The web site still says Evesham Technology and its still up, yet The Reg says its gone into liquidation.... . No offence is meant to my old employer, but a '3 month rolling contract', please, would you buy a PC from a company that did that to its staff? I'll stick with buying my Dells and HP server kit for my new employer, least I know I'll still get service in 3 months time.
Even if Evesham is limping along, lets be honest here, the name is now tarnished like Commodore, Gateway, Time, Tiny etc and no one in their right mind will buy anything from them now.
Hope you guys that have been 'laid off' get a job soon, trust me there is life after Evesham. If you're still there, (that is if its still going), I feel even more sorry for you.
I also got several spam e-mails from Evesham around 2003 which pissed me off no end. It wasn't as if it was just one - there were several, day after day. I thought that maybe the company was on it's last legs. It lasted longer than I thought it would. I'm desperately sorry for those who have lost their jobs, but like another person I explicitly warned people away from buying from Evesham as someome up in management obviously thought they could save some cash by buying dirty e-mail lists. Not the best way to run a company methinks. Ah well.
> I believe it [sending spam] was a case of a mistaken approach. Something they were cained for
Yes indeed. I have never so much as contacted Evesham, let alone bought anything from them - yet was spammed regularly over a few months. Calling it a "mistaken approach" is somewhat generous, since it's obvious they'd simply got a copy of the spammers' favourite CD: "One Million Guaranteed E-mail Addresses!!".
"sent my PC to Evesham for repair on 24th December which they have received and signed for, i still have not paid for it as was due to be paid 12 months later (Feb 2008), will i get it back repaired? Will i still have to pay?"
Differed payment means its gone out to finance company so Evesham has already been paid for your machine unless they formed their own finance which is unlikely. If the new company takes on full customer base with the warranty liability you might get you machine back repaired and then your liable to make the payments you signed for. If you don't then everything maybe "written off" even though there is a high chance the finance company may come looking for payments. If i was you if you don't hear something in a week from Evesham or so then contact the finance company and let them know you don't have the PC as effectively they own it. However everything seems up in the air to me having read this thread and it could be subject to full liquidation of all on site physical assets. Just make sure you have proof of return and keep any letters safe.
Although I do feel sorry for those who have had job losses, the end of Evesham is not a great loss. It has done a lot of people favours as the many that used to work there were never treated fairly and a lot of them have moved on to bigger and better things. Pay, perks and treatment were poor in many of the departments.
The end has been coming for a long time and everyone should have got out a long time ago - I don't know how anyone could not have seen it coming. I knew some people who had been there a lengthy period of time stayed on to hold out for redundancy pay from the government however.
The company knew what they were doing with the spam, as an ex-employee who got out in time I dreaded the amount of abuse we would got when we knew a spam email was about to be sent out. No one seemed to care how many people they upset. I will admit that although it was bound to cause bad PR I was surprised how bad it was.
I believe the company tried to get too big without having the right infrastructure. With better management the company could still be going strong today although perhaps it would not be quite the same as we know it. When markets change, businesses need to change to reflect that.
Their site didn't display orders right.
I tried to order a PC twice and when I got to the end it was missing some components.
I rang Evesham who told me they couldn't amend or check the order did actually contain the components I had ordered, they could only cancel it (yes I had ticked the correct options)
Tried again with the same result so I said right OK cancel the order and I'll go elsewhere.
Ended up buying a PC from a decent British system builder, Mesh Computers, have had to have the Motherboard and a drive replaced but they have bent over backwards to book the service visits when its convenient for me as I work odd shifts.
I also worked at a school where they had quite a few Evesham laptops, the build quality was diabolical.
My heart goes out to all those who lost their jobs but this company is no loss to the British PC industry.
Lets hope the same thing happens to Dell in the states (before trying Evesham I made the mistake of trying to buy a top of the range system from them but thats another story)
To be fair on their site - http://www.evesham.com/
the latest news is approximately 4 weeks old..so dunno who new it is..and it certainly doesnt mention anything about liquidation..
i bought a PC from evesham (customised though) and it's been quite decent..of course needing upgrades as usual etc..was never spammed though - just got the evesham monthly mag which was actually quite decent
good company, certainly beats buying direct from a Dell for eg.
I'm amazed nobody has talked about them back in the 8-bit days, I remember seeing their ads for their Freeze Frame "backup" cartridges and other hardware utilities in the magazines of the day.
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/displaypage.pl?issue=020&page=095&magazine=zzap
That's the Evesham Micros I remember!
I bought a custom server from Evesham in 1994 - the spec (for the time) was pretty high: 8GB SCSI disk, 32MB Ram, HP SCSI Tape Backup etc. ... Evesham left the disk uninitialised and I installed SCO Unix, MS-DOS and NT myself so that all 3 were bootable via separate partitions.
Evesham were knowledgable and helpful during pre-sales and after purchase. The server has been continuously running since 1994 - rock solid, not even a chkdisk error i nall that time, despite several power custs and frequent "in flight" messing with the O/S boundaries and boot partitions etc. (via partition magic).
I caught 2 thieves last year in the process of burgling my house ... walked in on them as they were dragging the server (by now on its side, but still powered on & running) across the study floor by the LAN cable. After "negotiating their exit", I put the old girl back in her rightful position under the desk, reconnected the monitor ... and yep, she was still plodding away like nothing had happened.
These days, it's mainly used by my nieces (aged 3 & 4) for surfing practice and general keyboard abuse, but I occasionally use it to administer my (physically adjacent) firewall/wireless router if it throws a wobbly and I can't connect from my other wireless PC's.
On the odd occasion I power it off these days (to give guests a quiet nights sleep, as the fan and disk are both pretty loud) the disk does "creak" a bit as it starts up again, but I reckon it's good for another couple of years yet. In all that time, the only performance mod I've made was to double the RAM.
Now, all Evesham were really doing was assembling other peoples bits into a grey box, but they did it pretty damned well IMO.
I used them thereafter to supply several basic PC's for use by my clients. These all proved just as reliable as my own. One in particular got lost by a courier company when I shipped it to my client after loading SCO Unix, configuring it and loading my application s/w. It turned up 3 months later. When I collected it the packaging was pretty mangled and I feared the worst. I tried to power it up, but it was unbootable. I opened the case, and found that all of the expansion cards had popped out of their backplane sockets (despite all still being screwed down at the brackets) - so the system had clearly been subjected to some pretty hefty impact during its travels. I bent the brackets back to their original angles, reseated the cards and booted again. Hey presto, up came the $ prompt without any errors! that system then ran for 5 years in a 24x7 application and never suffered an outage until the client eventually binned it.
So, Evesham are probably the only company to whom I could, with hand on heart, give such a glowing testamonial. All things considered, I for one regret the passing of one of the original "good guy" companies.
ps. and they never spammed me either :-)
Re: his comment about spammers..
You make me laugh! It must be really difficult to block the sender and delete unwanted emails...that must really put you out...people have lost their jobs and all you care about is your inbox. Irrelevant, inconsiderate & stupid comment mate.
Good luck to all who lost their jobs. Evesham Technology will be missed.
Just called Evesham Technology...
The old company has gone into Liquidation, the same company that ran out of money in the summer...
But Evesham Micros, the new company are still up and running and will still trade as Evesham Technology.
So its not all too bad as the company is still there and warranties will continue etc..
To everyone but particulaly to those who now have to make a choice about taking a 3 month contract.
Whatever else has been said, whatever absolute cock ups RA may have made in giving out the information, he worked hard- yes, for him and his family but also for many of the people that gave him their loyalty-that it ended so shambolically is more about the reserve of the man, not his basic nature-
to all of you, Good Luck and believe me, there are jobs out there-just not quite such fun ones-
I owned (still own in fact) - several C64s and Amiga A500s, I bought a lot of 3rd party stuff off Evesham in the late 80s and early 90s - they were a great company in those days. A lot of people who used to buy PC stuff from them in the late 1990s and early naughties that things started to go down hill when they moved from Evesham.
I shall remember them fondly from the excellent company they were in the 80s and early 90s.
I bought a new Evesham notebook which arrived just before Christmas Day (24th) and then i read this on the 5th.....
Their website is still very much alive, and they are still taking orders (i checked). Infact just this morning i got a response to a tech support query. I have been very happy with my notebook (Zieo NX680) but if the warrenty is going to dry up within less than a month of purchase that is obviously a concern.
Id imagine publicity like this is not going to help them get out of the situation they are in either, I mean its like the kiss of death almost. How many customers are not going to go elsewhere because of this? That means its a self fulfilling prophacy since they are going to getting major business to help them turn things around.
Anyway i hope that Evesham manage to pull through, this is my first purchase from them and so far they seem to have been great. And not having to talk to tech support agents in Nigeria or India is a bonus XD *cough* Dell *cough*
> Irrelevant, inconsiderate & stupid
Yes. Rather like the decision of some droid at Evesham who thought spamming total strangers was a good idea. Presumably you'd enjoy someone shouting "Buy our pizzas!" through your letterbox?
BTW: complaining about a company issuing spam has nothing whatever to do with its previously good record and obviously good customer support, or the sad plight of its employees.
I was contacted by an Evesham salesperson this evening, having cancelled my order earlier this week due to the uncertainty over the company's future. She told me that production of (uncancelled) orders was proceeding as normal, and when prompted assured me that warranties were handed off to another company for disposition regardless, and would therefore be unaffected by any changing business fortunes. This was a salesperson, so you may wish to take this information with a bucket of salt, however.
The website and email are down due to the administrators telling the ISP to pull the plug when they left not because they have cut and run.
I was an employee there for some 12 years and even survived the redunduncies of August 07. I started at a time when their reputation was not brilliant but I am pleased to say that I am proud to have been part of their upward success. At their peak they were good to work for. We had a really good community and I can even say it was like being part of one very big family. It continued like this almost to the end in July 07. Yes I agree management wouldn't listen, proceedures were put in place that didn't work, too many branches were opened with rediculous lease agreements and RA had this big idea that if 1 million emails were sent out to a list of bought email addresses a 1% return was enough to justify it. I can tell you now that those involved with the mailshot server didn't like the idea one little bit and were against it but we had no choice.
So let's hope that those that are left find something soon as they wait to see their fate.
R.I.P Evesham (Micros) (.COM) (Technology) and now I believe Micros again.
It never ceases to amaze me how many 'Ex-Employees' pop up on forums to defend Eveshamble's latest disasters, and tell us it really isn't their fault.
Perhaps it's just co-incidence, or perhaps I'm just being cynical in my old age?
Website is still down, it's been nearly 24 hours now. Looks like that ISP of theirs are dragging their heels about putting the plug back in. Hmmmm ....
Speaking as a REAL ex-employee myself, 1999-2004 I do agree that the company WAS a nice enough place to work until 2003 when the wrong people (both nasty AND incompetent) were promoted to management positions. I also agree that the opening of city centre showrooms was a disaster from the outset. The management were TOLD they would be nothing but money pits from the start, but of course, refused to listen.
Since 2004 Evesham went steadily downhill, and though I feel sorry for everyone who has been fired by this company in recent years, the fact remains that Evesham is solely the architect of its own demise.
See, now have a little bit of faith once and a while.
BTW don't get my last post wrong, they were all totaly to blame. I was more getting at the good times we all had together. You were right they had some very incompetant managers that never listened and had no idea how to deal with people. It was the very kick up the arse that many of us needed to realise there was another world out there that paid a damn site more. Like all good things you don't want them to come to an end but for those left they need to make the most of a paid income while looking for other employment.
@Anonymous Coward re HMRC - I guess from your comment that you don't appreciate that the money that HMRC collects is actually OUR money - as taxes get used to provide public services for everyone? That's why HMRC is the preferred creditor - we, the citizens of the country, take precedence over companies, the finances of which only benefit the shareholders of that company.
If "warranties were handed off to another company for disposition regardless" who exactly is responsible for them now? Do one of the Time group companies now handle them, and is that supposed to reassure any one who has bought from Evesham based on their previous good name that RA was looking to protect?
rumour has it that the osm engineers are being paid off and all warranties will become RTB, not sure I would be happy to send my PC back to TIME, likely to get all parts changed to inferior parts, also seems that RA has jumped ship to send is ill gotten gains and only "evesham" director left is too feeble to stand up for his remains colleagues
As an ex-employee who no doubt still has friends who work there (well, maybe no longer!) I'd say he has more cause than others to take an interest, wouldn't you?
Evesham were doomed from the moment they decided to concentrate on business sales while at the same time squandering big money on a chain of extremely expensive (and rather pointless) shops. I seem to recall many people in the industry, Evesham workers among them too I might add, at the time saying they had over-expanded & would live to regret it.
The chickens, it would appear, have come home to roost with a vengeance.
Having worked there from 1996-2004, it seemed year on year things got worse - when you had a management team who when confronted with their onsite engineers having low morale, suggesting that morale was unimportant gives you an idea of how out of touch they really were. Too many people with no clue trying to direct a few who knew what they were doing, but who were ignored when it came to the decision making process.
My thoughts are with those who are now jobless, lets hope they all get alternative employment soon and that in a few years time they can look back on this as the best thing that could have happened to them career-wise!
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