Robinsons announced their complete closure today and immediately family members who were once involved in the family business started sending me links to the announcement.
Aquila traded with Robinson’s
Just one debit note dating back to 27th December 2002, out of many years and trade with other Robinsons related companies like John Little. It is just one of many paper documentation that lies in our storeroom.
My business: Aquila
From 25th January 1999.
Why it is personal
It is one of those strange feelings.
Both our businesses have ceased dealings for some time now. Business relationships become cold and that is a fact. Yet, my family still feel an intensely personal relationship with the name because they had not only spent a large part of the good years trading with it, but there were the beautiful relationship with specific individuals in the company.
So much so that it rubbed off on me even though I hadn’t join the business back then yet.
A reminder
It is a long time coming, frankly. With all that talk about Orchard road dying over the past few years, we already knew it at least 15 years ago due to our trade dealings. And we knew that Robinson’s wouldn’t be spared and would eventually close down.
Robinson’s lost out on the ecommerce, social media and in essence the online sphere.
This is a reminder to myself to keep up with the times and the next frontier for businesses is AI and machine deep learning.
I can’t take the fact that we are still around after 70 years, from my grandma’s escape from tng sua days, for granted.
To many more years ahead.
Blast from the non-digital past
Paper records with Robinsons from 2002 damaged by fire incident at our factory. Glad to still have this around.
My business: Aquila
Keching 