Liquidators have been appointed to Grants Wholesale, a family owned clothing and footwear business registered in Edinburgh. The company agreed to be wound up voluntarily at a general meeting in the capital, with Kevin Mapstone and Kenneth Robert Craig of Begbies Traynor named as joint liquidators.
The company’s main trading address was at Houstoun Industrial Estate in Livingston. Accounts posted at Companies House for the year ended March 2024 listed just two employees, down from five the previous year. The company’s registered address has since been changed to care of the liquidators.
Grants Wholesale dealt in the wholesale of clothing and footwear, a sector that has been under sustained pressure from online competition, rising costs, and shifting retail patterns. The details of the company’s financial difficulties have not been made public, but the shrinking headcount from five to two over a single year tells its own story of a business in contraction.
Scotland’s small family owned firms are the backbone of the economy, and each one that goes under takes with it jobs, expertise, and often generations of accumulated knowledge. A clothing wholesaler in Livingston will not make national headlines, but the people who worked there and the families who depended on that income feel the loss just as sharply as any high profile corporate failure.