ONE of Scotland's leading distributors of musical instruments has ceased trading with the loss of 11 jobs.
East Kilbride-based P&R Howard (Music), which distributed the Westfield guitar brand favoured by musicians such as McFly's Danny Jones and US singer songwriter Jason Mraz, went into receivership after difficult trading conditions impacted on cash flow.
The directors, including founder and managing director Paul Howard, appointed receivers Blair Nimmo and Tony Friar of KPMG after exploring restructuring options. The receivers are now selling the company's intellectual property (IP) assets and stock, including instruments marketed under the Westfield, Rossini, Lauren and Session Pro brands.
Glasgow-based IP specialist Metis Partners has been instructed sell P&R Howard's brands and related domain names, while an online auction has been held by Sweeney Kincaid to sell its sizeable stock, which included guitars, amplifiers, drums, mandolins, banjos and other instruments and accessories.
Mr Nimmo, head of KPMG in Scotland, said: "P&R Howard was established nearly 25 years ago and in that time has built up a strong international reputation as a distributor of quality musical instruments.
"Unfortunately the company experienced difficult trading conditions and the only option was to cease trading with immediate effect, with the loss of 11 jobs."
Nat Baldwin of Metis Partners, which helped sell the IP assets of Fopp to HMV, said he expects there to be "keen interest" in the sale from around the music industry.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article