TheByte

Rob

Another casualty of the Global economic crisis.



Waterford Wedgwood collapses
By JANE WARDELL

LONDON (AP) — Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the maker of classic china and crystal, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday after attempts to restructure the struggling business or find a buyer failed.

Four administrators from business advisory firm Deloitte were appointed to run the company's businesses in Britain and Northern Ireland, while a Deloitte partner in the Irish Republic was appointed as receiver of Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the ultimate parent of the U.K. companies, and other Irish subsidiaries.

The U.K. joint administrators said they intended to continue to run the business as they seek a buyer. Trading in the company's shares was suspended on the Irish Stock Exchange where they languished at just one-tenth of a euro cent.

"Waterford, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton are quintessentially classic brands that represent a high quality product which is steeped in history," the administrators said in a statement. "The administration team will be working closely with management, customers and suppliers during this time to ensure operations continue whilst a sale of the business is sought."
Waterford Wedgwood, which employs around 7,700 worldwide, is the latest in a burgeoning list of iconic British companies to succumb to the global economic slowdown and credit squeeze. Department store veteran Woolworths, the queen's tailor Hardy Amies, tea and coffee merchant Whittard of Chelsea and fellow ceramics stalwart Royal Worcester and Spode have all filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months.

Wedgwood has been an iconic name in British pottery for 250 years, after its founder Josiah Wedgwood opened the first factory in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, in 1759. It began making bone china in the 19th century.
Waterford Crystal traces its lineage to a factory opened in Waterford, southeast Ireland in 1783, although that business failed in the 1850s. The brand was revived by Czech immigrant Miroslav Havel in 1947.

Waterford acquired Wedgwood in 1986 to form the present company, listing on the stock exchange and expanding overseas in the 1990s before buying fellow Stoke-on-Trent ceramics maker Royal Doulton in 2005.
Much of the business has now shifted offshore, where it employs 5,800 people, including 1,500 people at a plant in Jakarta, Indonesia, which produces most of the company's ceramics. The majority of its crystal production has been handed to Eastern European subcontractors.
The company employs a work force just a third of that size at 1,900 in Britain, including around 600 in Stoke-on-Trent and 800 in Waterford.

Waterford Mayor Jack Walsh said the closure of the crystal factory would deal a cultural and psychological blow to all of Ireland, noting that the crystal plant was one of the country's top tourist attractions and the product "one of only a handful of iconic Irish brands.'

"Given this, it is of major strategic importance that this company not be allowed to slip into oblivion," Walsh said.

The Deloitte administrators said the company has "benefited from significant shareholder support" in recent years as the management team tried to restructure the business.

"However, as trading conditions deteriorated, it became apparent that a restructuring of the businesses could not be achieved in an acceptable timescale," they said in a statement.

A subsequent alternative strategy to find a buyer also failed, they added.
Waterford Wedgwood chief executive officer David Sculley said he was "disappointed" about the bankruptcy filing, but remained confident a buyer could be found.

Under the administration process, administrators are appointed to salvage as much of the company as possible for the benefit of its creditors. While they may do so by selling the company as a going concern, they can revert to a break-up to recoup as much money as possible from assets if a buyer for the whole business cannot be found.

The receivership process in Ireland follows a similar path.

Waterford Wedgwood announced last month that it had been forced to ask its chief creditors for "forbearance" because the company could no longer pay its loans on time or in full. It also revealed falling sales and increasing first-half losses, and said its survival depended on securing new investment.

Rob

Glass blowers of Murano smashed by crisis
By Peter Popham in Rome

Their centuries-old workshops sell intricate curlicues of glass fantasy to the smartest shops in the world. But now the winds of crisis howling through the world are rattling the doors of the glass blowers of Murano.

"The glass-making district is on the point of collapse," says Davide Camuccio, secretary of FILCEM-CGIL, the union that represents the craftsmen. "The numbers [of sales] have been plummeting exponentially since the second half of 2007." The union reports that 300 of its 800 members in the island’s artisan glass-making workforce have been laid off. Once the Christmas boom is over that number is expected to rise to 600.

The cluster of islands north of the centre of Venice, collectively known as Murano, is home to 120 workshops large and small, all dedicated to turning out the sensual, delicate, richly coloured glassware that has been one of Venice's most celebrated products for centuries. But despite the gleaming showrooms and the glass Christmas tree in the main square, the mood in Murano is grim.

Gino Seguso, 70, has less reason to complain than most. His firm, Vetreria Archimede Seguso, was founded by his father in 1946, but Mr Seguso says his family have been making glass in Murano for 700 years. Today they sell to Tiffany's in New York, among many other upscale customers. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is one of their regulars, and visited the factory earlier this month. Corriere della Sera reported that he spent €165,000 in the factory’s shop on glass chandeliers, which he will hand out to the leaders of the world’s top industrialised countries when they assemble in Sardinia for the G8 summit next July.

With a hint of exasperation Mr Seguso says the Corriere report is wrong. "He didn't buy anything, he merely selected some samples of items he said he wanted to give as presents to his friends at the G8, and took them away and said he would inform us about his order in due course," he said. And the figure of 165,000 euros? "We didn't discuss the prices. Mr Berlusconi never discusses prices, he only wants the best."

If only there were more customers like him. But even a firm like Seguso is facing problems. "Our customers have not cancelled any orders already placed," he says carefully, "but they have postponed or slightly reduced their orders for next year. Normally our order book is full for the coming six months or one year, but at present it is empty. We, too, must live in this globalised world..."

"Even before the financial crisis some of the glass makers were in trouble," says FILCEM-CGIL in a new report on the industry's crisis. Today "Murano is in stormy water" and if the weather worsens "it risks going to the bottom."

The union reels of a list of the businesses which have been forced to take action: Vetrerie Venini and CVM, it reports, are the latest to take drastic measures, announcing that they will send the workforce home on 70 per cent pay early next year. Gino Cenedese has fired ("put in mobility" is the Italian euphemism) 16 workers out of 46, and its planned takeover by a firm in better shape is now uncertain because of the crisis, putting it in even greater difficulty.

And so the list goes on. The pre-Christmas sales boom has been a whimper this year, with a 25 per cent slump in sales. Americans constitute 60 per cent of the foreign buyers of Murano glass, and in 2008 their thoughts are elsewhere.

Murano’s glass industry has been written off many times in the past and today it is a fragile anachronism in a place that has become almost completely dependent on tourism. Yet the glass blowers are quite as central to Venice’s identity as the gondoliers.

Glassmaking was practiced in the Venetian lagoon as early as the 8th century; by the 13th century the glassmakers’ skills had improved hugely and their numbers had exploded, and it was at that point that the Doge forcibly moved them and their furnaces from central Venice to this little archipelago three kilometres to the north. The true reason for the diktat remains a matter of dispute: scholars disagree on whether it was to reduce the risk of fire, or to bottle the workmen up and prevent them selling their secrets to non-Venetians. Perhaps both considerations were important.

Whatever the reason, the move did them no lasting harm. Venice entered its golden age and the glassmakers accompanied it: the city-state’s mercantile connections to the Middle East brought in a wealth of glass-making techniques unknown to the rest of Europe.

But as Venice and its empire declined so did the fortunes of the artisans, challenged first by France and then, when Venice became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by Bohemia. With Venice’s incorporation into independent Italy, however, the industry's fortunes improved once again: with Venice increasingly important as a gateway to the outside world, both artistic influences and wealthy customers poured in, and the industry boomed.

But now the bad times are back with a vengeance. "The market gives," says Mr Seguso, "and the market takes away." Vetreria Archimede Seguso is confident it will survive - "I am very proud that my son has decided to continue in the trade," says Mr Seguso - but without a dramatic turnaround, much of Murano could go the way of the rest of Venice. The city has vowed to defend the glassblowers, but a new hotel is rising on the site of one workshop, and more are planned.

Glass blowers of Murano smashed by crisis - Europe, World - The Independent

The Diva

Wow, a whole art-form to disappear ...


such a sad sign of the times.

Harry Plopper

Here a local crystal-maker, Rogaska Crystal, closed 1/2 of the production facilities ... orders & demand is almost diminished ... While they didn't get a single order from USA for the 2009 yet. Btw, usually they sell more then 50% of whole production in the US market.

Indeed bad times for crystal-, china-, glass- & pottery-makers.

I wonder how Swarovski is doing.

Also ... most luxury-goods makers & designers are experiencing huge drops in demand & orders.


*****

I got some latest reports on my table earlier today ... Ouch! The forecasts are even more devastating than they were one month ago. I'm now more than 100% sure the world is going to experience a major economic shake-up in the next few years. And before that the crisis is going to deepen even more.

Mikael

I wasn't expecting this although on second thought it's only logical.

This is bad news for my mother. She has been collecting some Wedgwood china...

The Diva

It's good news for her in one sense: she now has collectables!

Mikael

Yup, that's until I, my father and my sister have destroyed most of them by accidentally dropping them.

Rob

^ Ha ha ...I know what you mean. I have broken a few Rosenthal cups that need to be replaced. Rosenthal is a German maker that is owned by Waterford ...so I guess its the end of them too

The Diva

NOOOOOO!!!!!!

Wait a minute... are they trying to increase the price of the remaining ones?

Rob

^ i'm not sure Diva .....I wonder if Rosenthal might be saved/sold because it is quite a mainstream (mass-prodution) manufacturer of good quality products ...but is genrally more modern than Wedgewood.