A prominent musical instrument supplier which has been in businesses for more than 30 years has fallen into administration.

Omega Music struggled valiantly to stay afloat when sales suddenly dried up in recent months and owner Ian Warnes said it eventually became "impossible" to carry on.

The business took a huge hit in November - usually their busiest trading period - when thieves stole more than 230 instruments from its premises in Townfoot Industrial Estate, Brampton.

This, Ian said, was just "another nail in the coffin."

The former music teacher and his wife Linda, who live in the town, set up the business as a supplier of musical instruments for schools. It had a client base of about 6,000 music departments across the UK.

There was also a retail side which sold instruments to local musicians and eventually expanded into an export market.

"[Schools] just have no money now," said Ian, 74. "It's because of that.

"We built an internet site and tried to diversify but the competition is so fierce, it became impossible to go on."

The business thrived for many years but Ian said things took turn for the worst about three years ago and income streams started to dry up.

The company was put into administration last month and its remaining £400,000 of stock is being sold off at auction to pay creditors.

"They take our stock and sell it for next to nothing," said Ian. "We get several pence in the pound. We have got to sell our house so it is not a good time.

"We had thought that by widening our activities over several areas - education, internet sales and overseas orders - we would be able to weather the storms, but with only the export orders performing and income from the other two sources cut to down to a bare minimum, that has not proved possible."

He continued: "It's not good. We just live every day at a time and there is people worse off than us.

"Everything is on hold until they know how much they can sell the stock for.

"When you go into business you take a risk. We thought the model we had was a good model but I'm afraid the Conservative government don't think it's worth supporting."

Omega was one of the first music businesses in the country to have a website, which it launched in 1996.

By 2007 the firm was selling more than £1.5m of instruments and accessories into education every year.

When school budgets started to decline following the 2008 financial crash, Omega expanded into export and became one of the main suppliers to schools in Dubai, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait.

But online competition continued to grow and profit margins were eroded. Unable to beat Amazon, Omega joined them and saw profit margins squeezed by 15 per cent.

Ian and the team trimmed costs and used advanced software to improve efficiency. Until just after Christmas it was not uncommon for them to have 200 orders across the website, eBay and Amazon every day.

Ian's brother Stephen Warnes was also a partner but he retired from the business about three years ago.

The closure has meant 10 people have been left without jobs.

Ian and Linda wanted to thank all their staff over the years for their service and customers for their loyalty.