I think this is the story of BM
* Good, well-regarded, company, some great national customers (the blue electronics chain, the car company known by a blue oval, the purple fitness place) and some good regional/local clients (banks, restaurants, $5-10 million revenue companies)
* Been in business 35-some years. Owners want out, they've paid their dues and it's time to ride off into the sunset.
* They hire capital advisors, because, they have real revenue and something to sell
* The company that is at the exact same address as another MSC in the state of Michigan starts registering the name Bestmark in Michigan and puts their owner's name as the legal registered agent of this company. Everyone feels good and is going to end up fat and happy.
* Somewhere in the due diligence, either they find something they don't like and/or COVID comes on so fast and furious that the purple fitness place and the blue oval car manufacturer and the blue electronics place and pretty much every restaurant in the world say F this we are more worried about staying alive than we are about CX and pull the rug out from under BM and that deal ends faster than Milli Vanilli did when they were found out to be lip-synchers.
* BM has an oh-bleep moment. Either gets evicted from or gives up its office space. CEO takes a job in the outside world, they take a PPP loan to pay themselves, and they scramble to find clients. It's truly a live-or-die moment for them.
* The new clients they find .-- the large sales portal, the well known auction site -- probably aren't good fits for BM's business model the way they had it in the past, but it's adapt or die, and it really scrambles up their business operations, plus, they are operating on a shoestring at this point.
* Now they're trying to run two businesses and probably dealing with large global companies who pay you when and how they want to pay you and not when the bills are due. They lose some (blue electronics) retain some (purple fitness), gain some (local restaurant chains), but they don't know whether things are up, down, left, or right.
* They've cut back so much and are so understaffed than getting back to their shoppers is the last thing they have time for, because the big big customers that are now their bread and butter aren't paying them, so they are using the money from the purple fitness and the blue oval and the local restaurants to keep them afloat between payments.
* So they're revenue-ok and cash-poor. But you can't pay your bills with promises.
* Meanwhile they let 16 BBB complaints go unresponded to, piss off many of their shoppers, and live off the backs of the ones that will take it.
One day the bill will come due for all this BS. I just want to make sure I'm not owed any money when it happens.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2022 10:00PM by gsfreeman2.