A firm that has helped create thousands of happy events inside its marquees has ceased trading.
PapaKata has been brought down by the pandemic restrictions.
The company hired out teepees and marquees from its base at Sherburn-in-Elmet.
PapaKata, which also has a registered business address on Blossom Street in York, ceased trading on Monday, 2 November.
“2020 would have been PapaKata’s most successful year to date. In March we were primed and ready to deliver a fantastic season of events. Then coronavirus struck,” wrote owners Richard and Amanda Monghan in a statement on their website.
“We thought we’d weathered the worst of it through the summer. However increasing restrictions have, one by one, sunk our lifeboats.”
Delivered 3K events
“Our industry has been devastated, not qualifying for direct support from government seen in other sectors, and the scale of the impact is immense: our revenue this year is down 93%,” they explained.
“As a team and company we’ve done everything possible to ride out the storm: diversified, hustled, begged and borrowed, we’ve worked our socks off… but we’ve been in the fight of our lives with our hands tied behind our back.
“The PapaKata team delivered over 3,000 wonderful events in our 15 years, with a perfect 100% completion record of which we are incredibly proud.
“We are so sorry that we couldn’t find a solution to allow us to survive the pandemic.”
People requesting further information are directed to the administrators, Redman Nichols Butler.
“Richard and I are heartbroken, for both our wonderful team of event professionals, but also our clients,” Amanda said.
“We are so sorry it has come to this.”
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, we said the Thor’s Tipi, which is seen in Parliament Street every Christmas, would be lost due to PapaKata ceasing trading. However, that is run by a separate company which is still trading. Apologies for the error