Crowdcube's Vulpine success heads rapidly downhill.

Vulpine raised over £1m on Crowdcube in 2015. The pitch was a massive success; more than doubling its £500k target.

This blog was sent a couple of messages last year stating that the company was in trouble - we wrote about it here

Well the accounts to YE April 2016 are now in.

In the Crowdcube projections the company showed a small loss of £224k for the year. In reality the company has filed a loss of £770k - or more than 3 times the 'projection'. Remember this projection was made during that financial year, so you have to wonder if it was a legitimate attempt or something else.

Add to this, the fact that 6 Directors resigned in 2016 and it does look as though the wheels have come off.

Part of the Vulpine message sent to shareholders in June 2016 read -

After considerable first time orders were placed By Evans Cycles for the first year of HOY Vulpine, on an exclusive basis, we had predicted growth of HOY Vulpine wholesale. Unfortunately our estimates coincided with a cycling clothing downturn across all the industry, from top to bottom. A new buying team at Evans are buying extremely cautiously, and are supporting their in-house brands where they have the greatest margin, so 2016 orders did not materialise, after the superb start to HOY Vulpine last year.

A warning that we have banged on about here since we started blogging. A warning that the likes of Righteous and Cauli Rice have failed to heed - new listings do no guarantee consistent new business. Warning lights are flashing.

The Hoy range, which was the big up in the Crowdcube pitch, is longer on their website.