Firstnet Solutions blames its own 'misguided decisions' as it enters liquidation

Leeds-based VAR calls time while slamming its 'underlying lack of a commercial leadership'

As first revealed by CRN, Firstnet Solutions has now entered liquidation, cursing its own poor decision-making for the downfall.

Founded in 2011, the firm claimed a tough 2017 eventually toppled the business. In its statement, the Leeds-based VAR blamed challenging trading conditions, primarily relating to hardware supply costs, cashflow pressures and an "underlying lack of a commercial leadership to support the business".

This all resulted, it claimed, in the company suffering a major decline in sales, and margins then followed suit.

"Sadly, repeated commercially misguided decisions have cost the company significant revenue and ultimately led to its failure. This is a very sad and devastating time for us all, our colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers," said David Cusworth, managing director of Firstnet Solutions.

"We will continue to work closely with our professional team and third-party advisers in this process."

In February CRN reported that Firstnet Solutions was set to enter administration, with FRP Advisory the potential insolvency practitioner handling the case, according to several CRN sources.

In January CRN obtained details of a £48,777 county court judgment (CCJ) on Firstnet from 4 January 2018.

When asked about the circumstances around the CCJ at the time, Angie Cusworth (pictured, with David Cusworth), director of Firstnet, told CRN: "The CCJ is in the midst of being resolved, unfortunately it was mistakenly overlooked due to the Christmas break. You will see the CCJ will be removed soon.

"It's a really exciting time for us; we're on the cusp of some very exciting blue-chip customer contracts in the datacentre."

Firstnet opened its first datacentre last March - a 400-rack facility which was previously an NHS datacentre. The datacentre was supposed to give Firstnet its own cloud, colocation and disaster recovery services, with the firm previously outsourcing these capabilities to third parties.

It also told CRN at the time that it was looking to hit £50m in revenue in five years' time and employ another 100 staff.

One source claimed that expenditure around high-spec kit for its datacentre was instrumental in Firstnet's downfall.