News: CBK Adventures under new ownership
Sunday 10th December 2023
Following our earlier post today on social media, we have been overwhelmed by the messages of support and have tried to reply to them all but it is a seemingly impossible task. We also felt that it was important to introduce ourselves and to take an opportunity to clarify a few of the questions / concerns raised to avoid any misinformation going forward.
My name is Helen Henderson, born and raised in Cullercoats, lover of all things beach, a keen wild swimmer, yoga enthusiast, wife, mother and previous employee of CBK Adventures.
In September of this year, I left my previous employment of over 12 years to take on a role at CBK Adventures and I loved everything about it. As far as jobs go, for me, it didn’t get much better. I loved the energy, the activities, the flexibility, the potential and the fact I got to showcase my home town and the North East coast was a huge bonus. However, as we now know, this was to be short-lived, as within a couple of months, the company closed and was placed into liquidation.
Trust me when I say, the closure of the business was absolutely devastating for everyone involved. Sadly, a business that had grown from nothing over several years to become a real asset to the Cullercoats community, was gone. We all, office staff and instructors, lost our jobs with immediate effect.
Initially, the most logical option for me was to seek employment elsewhere, however, I was reluctant to accept that such a key element of our local area would simply be lost. With the support of my brother in law, Gary Clark, Co-Owner of Ski Instructor Academy and Basecamp Adventures, we decided we couldn’t let this be the end. With his knowledge and expertise within the winter sports industry and my brief experience within the company, we felt we had an opportunity to try to make something good of this sad situation.
We made an offer to the liquidators to purchase specific elements of the company as a pre-liquidation sale. Part of the sale meant we could use the branding, website, social media aspects and assets of the business. There would be no debt carried forward and no customer information, in-keeping with GDPR guidelines. Outside of this, we are ultimately starting from scratch, with the need to set up new bank accounts, customer databases and computer systems.
We registered a new company ‘Cullercoats Bike & Kayak Adventures Ltd’, but decided that day to day we will continue to trade as CBK Adventures. We did debate whether or not to re-brand and decided that ultimately, several years of well established business far outweighed starting from scratch. We negotiated a new lease for the building, as that building is the heart and soul of CBK Adventures and we are currently working tirelessly to ensure this lovely local business can thrive once again. The biggest aspect of our bid was to ensure job security for those that lost theirs. CBK Adventures is nothing without their amazing team of skilled instructors and we are extremely thankful they are keen to continue with us as soon as we are operational.
We have a fair amount of work to do to be fully up and running again, we want to make sure everything is done right. So please bear with us as we navigate our way through. This is a new venture for us so there will be a period of adjustment required to enable us to put our stamp on the CBK brand.
We understand there is a process in place to assist those that may have lost money through previous bookings / gift vouchers and orders. Unfortunately, we are unable to honour any of the bookings / gift vouchers and orders placed previously. If we were to roll out activities without bringing any funding in, we would be bankrupt before we start, however, we will do our best to help those affected wherever we can and suggest they get in touch by email with details of previous booking/s so that we can assess on an individual basis.
I would also like to take this opportunity to ask that people be kind to one another. I appreciate there will naturally be a lot of frustration and possibly some anger about this situation, but we are trying to do something good for the local area and for our new and previous CBK Adventures customers. We would invite those of you with questions to visit us in the Cullercoats hub once we are open and we can hopefully fill in all of the blanks, as sometimes things can get lost in translation, particularly when communicating via social media.
Finally, Gary and I would like to say a huge THANK YOU! to all our amazing family and friends that have supported us in a variety of ways to enable us to do this. Without it, I’m not sure we would have taken the plunge? The encouragement and love is staggering and we will do our best to make you all proud!
Thank you also to the local community, the dog walkers, the passers by that have shown so much excitement, love and support and reinforced our reasoning for taking on this venture.
We look forward to what comes next!
Helen and Gary xx