Out of sight, out of business

PC builder Sight & Sound goes under leaving about £1m in debts.

Midlands-based 'off-the-page' PC builder Sight & Sound has gone into administration with debts of about £1m.

Sight & Sound is the third company connected to Atlantic Computers to have gone bust. Sight & Sound bought Atlantic from the liquidation of Memsolve in May last year. Before that, Atlantic was owned by Electro-Wide, which also folded.

Sight & Sound, which employs 10 staff, outsourced its manufacturing to ElecBrand, which is run by Salah Mohammed, a former Electro-Wide manager, leaving some of its assets in the possession of ElecBrand. In 1998, Sight & Sound said it had 70 employees.

Tracy Taylor, partner at administrator BDO Stoy Hayward, said the company had sought voluntary liquidation after struggling with cash flow. A creditors' meeting has been set for Friday.

A trade source said: "Most people saw this coming. A lot of the bigger distributors got out in time."

Steve Brazier, analyst at Canalsys, said: "Making money in the market for assembling your own PCs is harder than it's ever been."

Selling PCs may have been viable 10 years ago but today demand has progressed to supplying networks and ecommerce systems, said Brazier.

Jon Atherton, general manager at distributor Enta, said: "They got too much into making £20-£50 a box and competing on price."

In its fiscal year 1999, Sight & Sound made £37,000 from sales of £10.1m.According to sources, Sight & Sound lost £106,000 when systems builder MJC collapsed last year. Another firm, Sight & Sound Computers Ltd, was registered in 1997 but has remained dormant. Sight & Sound director Nick Smith could not be contacted at time of going to press.

A third company, Atlantic SSC, is registered with directors Salah Mohammed and Nick Smith.

It is hoped that some of Sight & Sound's creditors will be paid in full before liquidation. Trade sales accounted for 40 per cent of Sight & Sound's business.