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Thursday 18 May 2017

This is what happens when you let Crowdcube amateurs loose on Business Finance


GF Foods York raised money twice on Crowdcube. Now the Liquidation has revealed that 'unexplained discrepencies' in the company records were being reviewed.  The company owes £1.4m to various creditors. This could all have been avoided. It's a very bloody mess.


We called this disaster out a long time ago - the pitch details in both raises were highly suspicious and the company had already collapsed once. Crowdcube just ploughed on as usual, ignoring the obvious facts and allowing the founders to take investors money not just once but twice. You can find our posts here.

It seems beyond the bounds of possibility that Crowdcube will wheel out Luke Lang yet again to try to PRing his way out of yet another blood bath. But we guarantee they will. 

When will investors wake up??

We have copies of the Crowdcube Q &As from their second raise at the end of 2015. When asked if the company was trading in line with its projections for that year of £1.4m revenues and a NP of £200k, this was the founders response -

Hi 
At present we are matching sales to forecast - we have higher rates of sales from Sept - Dec in forecast due to seasonal listings and at present current orders for these products are matching the forecasts by customers.
We have new product listings with two major retails scheduled for February, so unless these range reviews are postponed by the retailers, which is highly unlikely we believe we will be on target to meet the forecast
Thanks

Sally

This raise only crossed the line because the company increased its equity offer by 40% at the last moment. Perhaps a warning to heed for the future? Whichever way you look at this, the comment above was nothing but a lie. The company never managed to file the accounts for this period. Crowdcube vetted projections for YE December 2016 had Revenues at £4.7m and NP at £1.5m.

Reading the 55 page Administrators report is chilling. They found the information they were presented with was wholly inaccurate and were forced to remove all the IT systems and place new locks on the company's buildings. It was such a mess that even now they have no exact idea what is owed to whom. Crowdcube investors can kiss goodbye to their £345k of investment for sure. 

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