1. The leadership and ownership of the project was split. With it being an amalgamation there could have presented a core problem with their identity, they are made up of business for which this isn't their primary concern, nor their field of interest - as it is a side project they won't prioritize it as highly as some of the others.

2. The initial funding wasn't sustainable - it was a reward for the area fitting a funding criteria - this might and does change meaning that one of its initial investments isn't a possible support if further capital is needed - it does not have a strong foundation.

3. It's workforce. With the workforce made up of people with barriers to work it can mean that they aren't able to be as selective in recruitment and they may have people who aren't as capable or reliable at completing the work required. Also, at the core of the business model is successfully training people up for other employment, this is fantastic for helping the people in the area but as a business it means they will have a high staff turnover, this can affect cost in terms of training and time.

4. Strategic decisions by the board. Moving away from grant-dependency was a good idea as it meant that they would be looking to sustain if funding is withdrawn. This caused problems for CREATE. By determining to match fund they limited the number of funding opportunities they could apply for and caused significant problems in terms of utilising manager's time and skills.They became increasingly dependent on cash reserves to cover this match funding and this caused problems in the company's cashflow. No cashflow means no business. They didn't have anything to fall back on when things started to go wrong or to cover additional costs when they arrived. The Financial statistics show clearly this rapidly declining grant based income.

5. Managers direction. The managers had to spend alot of time writing reports and clarifying where the money had been used because it was a charity enterprise. They had less time to contribute towards core business activities as a result which meant workloads suffered. They were also under more pressure to find additional sources of funding - causing a vicious cycle.

6. A difficult business model - external factors. in 1995 there was an obvious market for supplying the products for CREATE to reuse, recycle and resupply. There was an obvious market for buying the products too and it was ahead of its time in terms of proactively recycling materials rather than simply wasting them. Two of their investors were happy to readily supply what they considered to be waste and a liability. This situation was to change though. In 2007 European legislation and afterwards, customer trends, came to value recycling very highly and this caused a rethink for Thorn EMI and Dixons in the way they handled their older goods. More recycling companies emerged eating into CREATE's competitive advantage.

7. Legislation - new legal impetus was placed on companies to ensure goods were disposed of environmentally. This then created a market for those goods which CREATE relied upon and were previously considered to be a nuisance. With more interest in them, as companies sought to gain money to cover the costs of recycling them, CREATE's competitive advantage, market and supply chain became more difficult.

8. Market conditions - a growing interest in scrap metal to accommodate for the Chinese industrial revolution meant that items that previously could have been assessed for re-use and thus salvage by CREATE, were worth more as scrap metal. CREATE were being priced out of their market.

9. Training. Two things affected the training that CREATE provided. Firstly, CREATE in anticipation of the new legislation and regulations spent a lot of time and money training staff to be up to speed anticipating similar levels of work. This was not be the case with the falling demand and higher costs so alot of money and time was