Hayley from Dreamees Craft Ltd opened up on the Dreamees Craft Ltd Facebook page about some issues the company is currently facing.
From the screenshot
Hi Everyone, I know I’ve promised an update and I do apologise for how long it’s taken but I’ve not really been sure how to put things. It’s really not something I want to be sharing on the internet but as our business has been welcomed by so many people, I do feel I need to be honest so that we can move forward.
It’s been a tough year so far and we’ve been going through a lot of changes – we’ve been established now for 12 years and Jimmy joined the business around 6 years ago. As a brief history, we had a rough time with Create & Craft in the end and eventually left, thinking that’s what the main issue had been for us in regards to how rapidly our mental health was declining. At Hochanda, things were better in terms of our business relationships but we still couldn’t find our feet and really settle into Dreamees again. We were stressing about irrelevant things, everything was hard work, we were always chasing our tails and never actually feeling like we’re on top of things or have any real structure and security.
Tensions had been rising for the past 6 years, especially as my Mum clashed with Jimmy quite a bit. We had also taken on my Dad after he was made redundant, ideally to do our book keeping and alleviate our anxieties about the business. Jimmy had offered to do this three times but was turned down, with my Mum suggesting that’s the best job for my Dad (plus it gives him a job after being made redundant). So we asked our accountant to stop doing the book keeping, time was passing and the book keeping wasn’t being done – at that point, I muddled through doing it as best I could, even though the main reason we bought it in house was for a better understanding and control of the business, and I wasn’t able to do that amongst everything else. I’ve come to accept this sort of behaviour so ‘picking up the slack’ has always been something I just take on to get it done. Jimmy wasn’t aware that I had taken it on until months later and was, obviously, annoyed that it had fallen onto me and we still had no better understanding, also that he had been denied the chance to do it multiple times.
My Dad regularly told us about his own financial spreadsheets which understandably created tension as it seemed a choice then not to do the business book keeping as planned. We ended up going back to the accountants and having it redone at the last minute, costing £4500 in fees. Amongst other things, everything started to become too much for us – we were putting our savings back into the business to keep paying wages and both Jimmy and I in particular were struggling to carry on with how poor our mental and physical health was. We both knew we needed help as it was starting to affect our relationship so Jimmy and I went to therapy at the beginning of this year. We’ve been trying to unravel what has been going on and we’re finally seeing the totality of the situation and just how bad it is.
About a month ago we were trying to discuss things we had found out in therapy – a whole bunch of terms like emotional abuse, gaslighting and neglect have been used by our therapist about scenarios happening in the way my Mum in particular has treated Jimmy and I – when it got particularly heated. My Mum admitted all sorts of things that she’d done to Jimmy over the years and had agreed to go to therapy herself and get the help she needs. Jimmy then passed out due to the stress, I was about to take him home and unfortunately my Mum initiated another argument. The neighbour at work got involved and caused Jimmy a fit from the stress – this same week he also had a bowel cancer scare and only a month ago got a hernia.
Obviously our doctor and therapist got involved and with their help, we’re distancing ourselves from my parents as Jimmy and I agreed we can’t do this any longer. As hard of a decision as it has been, we’ve ended up parting ways and it’s just myself and Jimmy running Dreamees for the time being. We have been in touch but my parents are still in denial about what the professionals who’re helping us have said. As I’m sure you can appreciate, this has reduced our capacity, hence why we have restructured the business, but it also hasn’t left us any room to recover in ourselves.
As I said above, I’m not really comfortable having to share this – it has torn me/us apart and obviously it’s something I never expected to come from our therapy sessions, especially with how close myself and my Mum have always been. We have been trying our best to keep going throughout this but we have received a few rude messages over the past month (and I mean a few, the majority this really doesn’t apply to!) and it’s just not OK for us to be treated that way, regardless of the problem.
I know the majority of you will appreciate that this is a lot for us to deal with, purely on a human level, and we have been as forthcoming as we felt we could be about delays. I simply have not been ready to share this and would much prefer to not have to divulge as much publicly but it has impacted business as usual. It’s been one unforeseen thing after another just recently and being told that we’re a business before a human being by multiple customers has been unnecessarily hard on top of everything else. We have and always will be as accommodating as possible and I apologise for any orders that have been a day or two late. Please be assured that this is not the service we want to offer but it’s the best we’ve been able to do whilst we get to a point where we are able to step away for a month to allow ourselves to recover.
Jimmy’s parents have been in the process of moving from Stockport to Mansfield to be closer to us over the last 6 months and, this week, they are moving into our house with us to help us get back on track. Whilst they’re waiting for their new build to be completed in the next few months, this is going to allow us to coincide a short break to help them move over with taking some time to ourselves. I will post an updated schedule of our closure as soon as it’s finalised – we will be shipping all orders placed until I release our closure so please don’t worry for the time being. We will also be shipping orders over these weeks off but please bear in mind that we won’t be working any sort of regular hours/days so our shipments will be intermittent. I am not able to guarantee when these shipments will be made so your order could be delayed by a couple of weeks. If this isn’t convenient, we will resume normal service at some point during November (I will update as soon as it’s finalised) so you can then place an order to ensure it’s delivered within our usual timeframe. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.
We also haven’t got access to the phone number which has been on our contact slips in orders so please email us instead of calling as we aren’t receiving any messages left there and my Mum no longer has access to anything order related. We are getting a new phone line but for now, we only have a customer service email address. If you have placed any telephone orders or in-store orders that haven’t been fulfilled, please get in touch as we don’t have access to some of that information and may not be aware of your order.
Even though we will be taking a break for a month, we will be back with all of the new launches we had planned, just a little later than planned. We have also been promising shows on CTV since March and unfortunately haven’t been able to bring them to you due to all of this happening. We have, however, been (somehow!) managing to build a great relationship with HobbyMaker, who have been exceptionally supportive and understanding. We hope to be coming back to CTV as soon as possible and will definitely be back on HM in November.
Thank you so much for your support,
Hayley
