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Friday 26 June 2015

Camden Town Brewery accused of bullying



We came across an episode which sheds some interesting lights on crowdfunding's claims to be the people's way.

Camden Town Brewery has been a great success to date  - it recently raised over £1m on Crowdcube to prove it - although it had to retrospectively reduce its valuation due to selling 20% to a German firm for considerably less than the crowd had paid.

That aside, it had another issue at the turn of year with a small micro brewery based in Norfolk. Redwell had a beer called Hells Larger - so do Camden. Redwell claimed that Hells is a generic German term for a type of lager - which is why they chose the name. Actually the official term in German is Helles but it's close enough we feel. So Camden have taken them to court  - the High Court where things start at £30,000. We feel that Camden have no case and that they are bullying what is a genuine small business, creating jobs in an area where unemployment is traditionally high. It maybe an interesting case - since when did Hell become the property of one company? It does Camden no favours and they should really know better.

To round this one off - Redwell tried the crowdfunding route to raise money to fight the case on Idiegogo.  It bombed. They are still selling Hells Lager so the fight is still on. 

1 comment:

  1. Big success ahead? Waiting for your article/view on this.

    http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/21/camden-town-brewery-sold-inbev-worlds-biggest-drinks-company

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