TVSN’s credit insurer walked first. Kiwi suppliers found out last

Cushla Reed did what careful suppliers are supposed to do. Her footwear company Minx supplied TVSN on standard trade terms, watched customers buy her designs live on air in Sydney a fortnight ago, and had a forward order confirmed for next winter. Now the Australian shopping network is running a closing-down sale and Minx is still waiting on a six-figure payment it may never see.

“All the indications were that they were on the up and up and doing well,” Reed told the Herald. The email she received from owner Direct Group blamed difficult trading conditions and limited access to funding, said no buyer or investor had been secured, and said nothing about her invoice. That gap between how a customer looks and what it can actually pay is the whole lesson.

The insurer saw it coming

The emotional supplier testimony will dominate coverage. The more useful fact is buried lower. According to A Current Affair, TVSN’s trade credit insurance was withdrawn, the cover that protected suppliers against non-payment, and some suppliers stopped shipping stock as a result. Earlier in 2026, TVSN had also asked some suppliers to move onto payment plans.

Credit insurers are not sentimental. They price and pull cover based on their own read of a buyer’s balance sheet, often well before anything public happens. When cover disappears, the professionals have already voted. Suppliers who were not tracking that signal, or who treated a payment-plan request as an administrative favour rather than a liquidity alarm, kept shipping into a business the market had already marked down.

A creditor queue with Kiwi names in it

Minx is not alone. Brisbane supplier Shirley Piscina, who had supplied TVSN for 17 years, says she is left with a $200,000 debt, while So Simple Solutions says it is owed more than $170,000. Other unpaid invoices run from $11,000 to $44,000. Direct Group, which also owns Innovations and In-Fashion, is clearing roughly $30 million of stock at retail value to reduce outstanding liabilities.

Many suppliers were left in the dark, hearing about the closure second-hand. Alison Lennard of Philosophy Australia, for whom TVSN was the biggest wholesale client, said she had “no idea whether there is any possibility of recovering that money”, or even whether she could get back stock the network is holding. That second worry should alarm every supplier who has never checked whether their terms include retention of title, properly registered.

Booked revenue is not banked cash

For New Zealand SMEs this is an extreme version of an everyday problem. The 2026 MYOB Business Monitor found 42% of small-to-medium businesses struggled with late payments, and 35% name cash flow as their top operational anxiety. FundTap head of growth Shane Laurence said in June that larger businesses are “dictating extended terms of trade” of 45 to 60 days, leaving small suppliers to fund two months of wages and materials before they are paid.

Every day on those terms is an unsecured loan to your customer. Margins to absorb a bad one are thin. In the 2025 financial year, total NZ business surplus before tax fell $11 billion, or 9.4%, to $110 billion. And more stock is sitting in the chain: retail inventory rose 4.5% to $9.2 billion in the June quarter even as seasonally adjusted sales volumes slipped 0.5%. More goods held by buyers means more exposure when one of them falls over.

Broadcast retail is a shrinking shelf

TVSN’s collapse is not simply one company’s misjudgement. Linear television is under structural pressure on both sides of the Tasman. TVNZ’s latest annual report shows revenue fell 6.5% to $262.9 million, with TV advertising down $23.8 million while digital grew. Suppliers leaning on any broadcast retail channel should price in sector risk, not just counterparty risk.

What suppliers should check this week

• Ask whether your receivables are insured, and set up a way to hear when cover on a key customer is cut or reduced. That is free intelligence.
• Treat a payment-plan request as a red flag, not a courtesy. Tighten terms or stop shipping until the account is current.
• Cap concentration. If one customer is your biggest wholesale account, set a ceiling on what you will carry on credit with them, however prestigious the deal.
• Protect your stock. Retention-of-title clauses and registration on the security register are cheap compared with standing at the back of an unsecured creditor queue.
• Shorten or finance the gap. Deposits, shorter terms or invoice finance turn paper revenue into cash sooner.

Direct Group says the clearance will stop if a buyer or investor appears, and it remains hopeful of preserving supplier relationships. Minx should hope so. But the smart money already made its call when the insurance went. The next time a big channel offers a forward order, SME owners should ask the question insurers ask first: can this customer actually pay?

Sources

• NZ Herald: Kiwi footwear company Minx awaits six-figure TVSN payment as network holds closing-down sale (2026-10-07)
• Nine/A Current Affair: ‘Shame on TVSN’: Suppliers say they’re owed hundreds of thousands as network shuts down (2026-10-07)
• Sydney Morning Herald: Suppliers left in the dark as TV shopping network prepares to close (2026-10-06)
• The Post: Dollar bill blues – Why more small businesses are struggling under the weight of late payment (2026-06-13)
• Stats NZ: Annual enterprise survey 2025 financial year (provisional) (2025)
• Stats NZ: Retail trade survey June 2026 quarter (2026)
• TVNZ Annual Report FY26 (2026-08-27)