There was a store chain in the IS called office depot. They shut down hundreds of stores cause of poor upperlevel management. Even if the stores closed were doing good. That is how. HEL usa was just an store in the chain. Poor record keeping usually results in the offshoot stores getting closed so the parent store can stay open, even if it is the parent store that caused the issue.
Stupid but then half the crap in business is stupid.
Having dealt with craig and seeing first hand how good his work was, I do not see how they closed on their own.
Sour grapes? Really? You are actually going to use that term?
Would you have "sour grapes" is the company that you worked hard for laid YOU off cause of their screw up? Damn right you would. Seeing how the UK has treated subordinates in other countries over the decades and centuries, I can easily see how they caused the issue.
No matter how hard you work: if you make less profit than the equivalent of having the investment on the bank, you are out. Even if you work hard. Part of my salary is fixed, and part is variable. The latter is set-up for the upcoming year based on -guess what?- expected company results. If the company makes profit, I get money. If I work hard and the company doesn't make the expected profit, I don't get my variable.
Can't tell about HEL because I don't know the details. Probably he has good reasons to complain and it was not that "sour grapes" after all. I have known many incompetent managers, but I think I still have to bump into a manager that closes a branch that is making good profits without a better alternative.
I wonder how many brake kits in the USA did Hel sell. If you have to pay at least one person's salary and the rent of the warehouse + lighting, water etc, you need to make at least $3K a month clean. If each brake kit sells at 100% profit, and let's say each brake kit costs $100, you need to sell 60 brake kits a month to break even. Now let's say that you sell 100 brake kits a month. Hel Usa is profitable, isn't it? You are cashing $10K a month, $5K is the cost of the material, $3K is the fixed cost, so there is a $2K profit.
Now let's say that you shut down the USA branch and ship directly from UK. You already have the warehouse and the workers, so you don't have any additional cost. Let's say that the cost of shipping each brake kit individually is 20$ (to err on the safe side). If you sell the same 100 kits, you are cashing $10K, from which $5K is the cost of the brake lines, and $2Kis the cost of the shipping. So the profit for Hel UK for the same 100 kits a month is $3K, without the hassle of having another employee and office offshores.
Global economy, isn't it? Once I put my order over Internet, it really doesn't matter much from where the goods are coming. I either buy in the local business, or worldwide through internet.
