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"VEHICLE WINDOWS IS ON FIRE!"Between 3 and 4am, on the morning of Saturday, 11th February, Vehicle Window Centre was attacked by a person of unknown identity who carefully spent an hour ensuring that our factory was completely destroyed by fire. More than 15 fire engines were dispatched to fight what had become a fire of over 1000 degrees centigrade, but in the end all they were able to do was to stop it spreading to nearby units including the tyre factory next door. Sadly they were unable to save the unit next to us, a stage lighting company, run by two enthusiastic but now warehouse-less young men. In addition, Wendy and Emma's new organic and fair trade baby products business, Makes A Change was also severely affected, although it is finally running from the new unit. Undeterred, Steve, Wendy, Lynn, Yvonne and Emma worked in a temporary office (Wendy’s horsebox!) for a week while Mick and his team gamely salvaged what they could. We were luckily offered a new unit by our landlord – 1/5 the size of the now-blackened one – and we were able to move in the following week.
Despite everything we have done we are physically unable to take on the volume of work that we could do before the fire, given the size limitations of the factory. We have also had problems with planning delivery dates as with all new systems, production lines and re-stocking we are not always finding that our estimates of production speed are right.
For more photos please click here |
It was only the Monday after – two weeks after the fire – that we were in limited production. Thanks to the herculian efforts of every member of our team (who were suddenly forced to start working shifts in order to best utilise the space in our new, smaller factory) we were actually producing our first products within such a short space of time.
Things are rapidly improving and we really hope to be into some sort of normality in the next few weeks. We would like to most sincerely thank our customers and suppliers who have been so kind, understanding and generous, and of course our fabulous staff who have worked so hard for so long under conditions of extreme pressure and stress.