I can only imagine that the chat would have been over potential buyers, redundancy options, how they'd be entering a job market already flooded by people after the earthquake, and how their lucky break to still be in work after what had happened in the city had finally run out.
They were a well-established manufacturer in Rolleston. Listening to the locals canvassed on radio the other day they sounded genuinely surprised at the situation.
I started thinking about the possibility of local communities buying into companies that should work on the face of it, but have gone bust.
The first example that came to my mind were the various supporter-owned football clubs in the UK's lower leagues, the most well known being AFC Wimbledon. I follow a little, formerly supporter-owned football team in the UK and it's not an uncommon model in other codes with many AFL teams being supporter-owned.
I guess it's reasonable to expect a groundswell of support from a community to financially back their local sporting club. Sport is so closely linked with community pride and the business plan is built on engaging and entertaining their supporter base so locals reach into their pockets.
Whether this holds for communities supporting manufacturing businesses they care about, but don't have such a close interaction with is another matter; especially given the post-'quake economic conditions facing people in Christchurch.
Examples of staff buying out businesses are common. Many businesses even encourage a degree of staff ownership with share offers. A bank my partner worked for rewarded staff with shares no doubt to give employees a greater stake and interest in driving the performance of the bank.
I wonder if any of those conversations around the shop floor yesterday were about the possibility of taking control over their own destiny by pooling their resources and putting in an offer to buy the company.
If they could pull it off they'd have more collective drive to get DesignLine performing again. No doubt they could also unburden the company from it's debt laden owners in the US.
My brother-in-law's a banker and was interested in community micro-finance initiatives while working in Melbourne. I started thinking about how his experience may apply to my speculation about those DesignLine staff and got on to a couple of good Australian sites on how staff and communities can buy into their own futures: Social Traders and the Australian Employee Buyout Centre.
