Dan,
I'm sure you may feel my previous post in this thread are a little one sided and that perhaps I have some affiliation with other parties, I can, and the moderators here can (if you choose to use the Personal message feature of this site{apparently not very often]) assure you of my impartiality. My only interest is the on going support and supply of quality and innovative products to myself and my fellow home brewers, many of whom on occasion participate in group/bulk buys run on this site.
Our users are also well aware of how much an issue within your business, can effect HB hardware supply across the country and I'm sure would agree your management's attempts to down play or hush "Rumours" have only served to further undermine the tenuous position the company placed itself in when in sacked the guy that owned the web site and the trade Mark ( that your currently still using by the way{which is technically stealing}) with out rhyme nor reason or perhaps Jure (and to this or any other employee I wish no malice) was truly along with the new staff additions, so much more qualified than the guy who built the business and some of it's longest serving employees.
Your issue is this: Kee could be an arsehole stealing ****, but when shit went down and changes in circumstances required (maybe) the changes that have taken placed, business management decided the biggest asset to the company should be treated like mushrooms.
Fortunately even the lowliest educated of us here know what honesty is, there are users here that move your entire annual turn over, through client accounts in a day.Others that slog their asses off 6 and 7 days a week just to keep a float, the $10 or $20 for kit they scrape together maybe the only beer they see.
KEG-KING.com.au your low stock won't sink you, or even if you don't have quality assurance warehouses in China anymore, we are home brewers, the community has an instinctual sense of right and wrong. You basically shot the Aussie JFK of home brewing, or want us to believe Skippy was just another kangaroo.
None of this happened yesterday whether you like it or not your customers deserve to be appraise of the changes that have taken place, none are imbecilic enough to believe failure to do so is accidental. The only reason to deliberately hide this is to ride the shiny coat tails of the Man the new management just plundered. I have seen entire hotel chains taken over/absorbed by other hotels/new businesses over night; smooth as butter milk (those in Perth drop by the Inglewood and say hi to Rollie for me, hell get the bloke a beer).
Cluster **** is what comes to mind!
You need the community's support.
The community needs your honesty.
To date you've lie by omission and booted a trusted member of the community.
The 12 (? correct me) HBers that are now former employees probably doesn't sit well with this crowd either.
I'll move more than $40k of equipment/product with this community in the next 6mths, not to make money but to invigorate the market, to give the guys a bulk rate on a quality product.
WHY AM I GOING TO SPEND THAT WITH YOU?
SHOOT ME DOWN!
The silence is what will kill this business, it's deafening! (If that is by court order, I can only point to the cluster **** this change over has been from the start)