Torbay Blinds Case Study

Founded by the Gratton-Davey family 30 years ago, Torbay Blinds remains a family-run business at heart.

Celebrating over 50 years of knowledge and expertise in the blinds and awnings manufacturing industry, they pride themselves on the quality of their product range, servicing prominent regional businesses, such as restaurant-chain Rockfish, as well as national contracts and the growing domestic market in the region.

All their blind and awning solutions are manufactured locally, benefitting from original components designed and assembled in-house.

Torbay Blinds champion passing down practical manufacturing skills to future generations by employing and developing local talent. They retain many long-standing and dedicated employees as a result.
 

The current owner-manager, Maria Hall, took over the business eight years ago following the passing of her father. She was keen to partner with an accountancy firm that took a holistic approach to business advisory, which has proved invaluable over the last 2 years of trading.

With the arrival of Covid-19 in March 2020, and the temporary cessation of manufacturing production, Maria was concerned with how best to support her staff financially whilst maintaining positive cashflow within the business.

Bishop Fleming’s payroll bureau proactively offered to outsource payroll compliance and complete the CJRS claims necessary to place staff on temporary furlough leave. This enabled Torbay Blinds to support and retain all staff during the first lockdown by making best use of available government support schemes.

The proactive advisory of corporate financial support by the CBS team, such as business rates relief, local council grants and government-backed loans (CBILs/BBLs), enabled Torbay Blinds to safeguard its cashflow during production down-time, and subsequently re-start (socially distanced) production in Summer 2020 to satisfy the demands of the growing home-improvement market.
 

Additional machinery was subsequently required to service the increased demand from customers, so Bishop Fleming advised on the corporate tax reliefs available from investment in new machinery, including the introduction of the new super-deduction from 1st April 2021 onwards. This enabled Torbay Blinds to grow its production capacity and achieve record level turnover in the trading year to 31 October 2021.

As Torbay Blinds continues to grow to meet the demands of the regional market, Maria draws comfort from knowing that she can contact Bishop Fleming’s diverse range of advisors for all her business needs.

There is a hope that Torbay Blinds will continue in the Gratton-Davey family for a third generation and Bishop Fleming will be on hand to discuss succession planning and exit strategies when the time comes.