By Tim Corfield
I was listening to “Wake up to money” a few days ago and heard an interesting story. The retail growth figures for October had been published the day before at 7.4% growth in volume. A rosy picture, considering Brexit, was the general reaction to these figures.
A tailoring retailer, James, just couldn’t believe the figures so he contacted the ONS for clarification. It was explained that the ONS had collected data from around 5000 business of which half had employees of over 100 and the other half employees of under 100. The smaller companies actually recorded a decline in growth of around 17% for the year! When aggregated with the growth figures of the larger companies the mathematical average worked out to 7.4%.
Misleading or what?? There doesn’t seem to be one day that passes without an ‘expert’ body giving soundbite conclusions based on the findings of their recent surveys. Without taking time to look into the data and how it has been complied it is very difficult to assess exactly what information is being put into the public domain and how useful that information actually is.
Like James, my view is that smaller companies are finding the present economy tough. What about businesses with 10 employees or less? Never mind 100!
At Griffin & King we specialise in helping smaller business cope with financial difficulties. You could be forgiven for thinking that these businesses are often ignored by the big institutions. If you come across a business that has difficulties please don’t hesitate to give us a call to see if we can help – I’m sure we can! Please call me or Janet or any one of our team who’d be only too pleased to help.
