Chomette Limited – Import and Distribution

“Chomette is an importer of light catering equipment and distributes these products into the catering and retail market sectors in the British and Irish markets.  We import from many countries, mainly European and Asian countries.  We employ about 40 people, stock and sell about 4,500 different products to 3,000 regular customers.  We have annual sales of £7 million.  We fall into the medium small sized business category and run a tight accounts department of three, credit control, product purchases and the senior role of financial controller who picks the non product purchasers and all other normal financial duties.  We felt we lacked someone with the experience of a Financial Director and had become reliant on our accountants for more “high brow” financial advice.  This was unsatisfactory insofar as the accountants did not really have a good understanding of our business and were going to be very expensive to effectively employ 1 day a week for 52 weeks of the year.

Jeremy Walker of the FD Centre joined our team in 2004 on a one day a week basis and we immediately started to reap the benefits of having someone who was experienced at the position of FD.  He learnt about our business from the inside and provided an objective view helping us to look at our business from different angles.  He introduced tighter financial control and produced regular monthly management accounts allowing us to take a more proactive stance in running the business on an “in time” basis.  Decisions were made more quickly and allowed us to act with conviction and accuracy.

Unlike accountants, in practice, Jeremy has picked up a lot of sharp experience in recent years and has become a real asset to the business”.

Charles Rickards – Managing Director