Box manufacturer goes bust after thinking outside the box

A box manufacturer has gone out of business after a disastrous decision to try thinking outside the box.

Crockett and Tubbs Boxes Ltd of Chelmsford, Essex, made the announcement yesterday after several months of making a variety of things that weren’t boxes.

“Thinking outside the box might work for companies who don’t make boxes, but for us it was catastrophic,” explained Jeff Crockett.

“It was my fault, it really was. If anything, we should have thought more in the box.”

He went on to explain what happened.

“About a year ago, growth was stagnating, we’d been a solid performer in the box industry but we weren’t seeing any new avenues for expansion.

“So, I googled ‘box’ to try and get some inspiration and came across an article called ‘Thinking Outside the Box: Innovate to Grow’.

“It said that too many businesses spend all their time thinking within the box – I mean, that was us too a tee. We’re a box manufacturer – and that more businesses needed to think outside the box.”

Following the article’s advice, Crockett and Tubbs Boxes began making garden gnomes and banking software and inflatable sex toys, and that’s when the problems started.

“Most of our clients just wanted the boxes, and came to us because we manufactured boxes. So, when we offered them inflatable sex toys instead, they just went to our competitors to get all their boxes.

“Thinking outside the box has cost us everything.”

The sad news of Crockett and Tubbs Boxes Ltd’s closure comes in the wake of the news of a videogames company to had to close after they decided to ‘take things to the next level’ which made all their games far too hard.

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