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Why restarting your business
Whether you’ve ceased trading and your business is dormant, or you’re still trading but things aren’t going in the right direction, you may want to ‘reset’ or restart your business.
In all cases, the best way to do this is to draw up a brand new business plan, outlining your starting point, where you want to get to, and the steps you’ll take to achieve this. Hiring a new manager or finding a new business partner or investor can also be good ways of injecting fresh, new ideas into your business.
If your business was dormant, you must inform HMRC that you’re resuming trading. Unfortunately, however, you can’t simply walk away from any existing debts or liabilities.
When to restart
Before you commit to restarting your business, make sure you fully understand what went wrong last time.
If you stopped trading due to the recession or general market conditions, you should probably wait for the economy to start improving again. This time around, you’ll have to figure out a way to make the business recession-proof, as economies do fluctuate continuously and you should hope to build a business that is robust enough to withstand these movements.
Don’t wait too long, however, or else you’ll lose out due to increasing costs and wages. If you ran into trouble for any other reason, you need to make sure that you now have the knowledge and skills to avoid making the same mistakes again.
In either scenario, you need to carry out market research just as if you were starting out for the first time. Demand, competition and customer needs may all have changed in the meantime.
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