Ethos Global raised £709k on Crowdcube a year ago. Valued then at around £4m on the basis of their Cambridge studio and the new opening in Spitalfields London, the company accounts are now 5 months overdue.
Being late filing annual accounts is nothing new. Being 5 months late is however unusual. They are also overdue their Confirmation Statement, so their page at Companies House is mainly in the red. We decided to look into it and came up with some rather odd discoveries.
Ethos based its whole Crowdcube pitch on the success of its Cambridge studio in the St Andrews House building in the centre of Cambridge. According to their shopfitters AOC, they spent £1m on the fit out. According to the Crowdcube pitch -
Since launch our Cambridge High Street location has served over 10,000 individual customers and exceeds revenue targets with 83% customer rentention rate. This was achieved prior to first investment in November 2015.
So it has come as some surprise to find that the Cambridge studio has closed down. The space is currently on the market with Bidwells This studio had been going since 2013 and shortly after raising their money on Crowdcube, they closed it.
In order to get to the bottom of this, we sent Ethos a series of questions. See below
DANIEL BOOTH
In order to get to the bottom of this, we sent Ethos a series of questions. See below
- Why have you closed your Cambridge studio?
- Did you sell the lease or just close?
- What happned to the £1m shopfit investment (AOC’s figure) which you invested in Cambridge.
- Was the closure on the horizon when you raised the Crowdcube funding?
- Why are your accounts now very overdue?
- You claimed to be opening a minimum of one new unit per year. So how is this going? To date you seem to have closed one and opened none?
Hi Rob,
Thanks for your email and apologies on the slow reply.
At this moment in time ETHOS Global ltd has no comment on the questions below.
Kind Regards,
DANIEL BOOTH
Head Of Communications
There is no reason for Ethos to answer our queries - we are not shareholders. However we do have a good number of readers who might be.
As the head of communications, he's highly uncommunicative.
ReplyDeleteThe Spitalfields one did look almost open last time I checked (some time last summer)...
ReplyDeleteThey must be a very big organisation, to warrant having a Head ofCommunications!
ReplyDelete£1m on outfitting a now redundant gym...
ReplyDeleteThis is beyond a joke. Good digging, but this and other instances you raise of flagrant misappropriation of crowd raised money need more than your polite email. Almost certain nothing will happen but if Crowdcube had any respect for investors they should respond to this quickly.
Different point - but perhaps the tide is turning and the equity crowdfunding train is starting to run out of steam and the past is starting to catch-up.. Do you sense this? Seedrs and Crowdcube have old favorites they parade (Oppo, Pod Point, Cauli Rice etc) to keep them going which do well - but aside prom PR stunt raises such as Tandem/Monzo (which presumably generate little or no fees for the platforms) there don't seem many decent companies new to crowdfunding pitching and succeeding on the sites.. The proportion of successful campaigns seems to be falling among newer companies - do you track the companies that pitch and don't succeed??
Thanks for the update on Ethos. This was a company that raised funds and had fundamental errors in the numbers and yet failed to acknowledge the issue around these when brought to their attention (yes the numbers are wrong but that does not matter etc etc). then any questions really asking questions were answered with a tone of 'we know what we are doing how dare you ask'. All in all im not surprised by the answer above based on this
ReplyDeleteThey were kicked out of the one in Cambridge due to unpaid rent some where in the 200k region after legal cost etc and are still being chased for this among many other bills.
ReplyDeleteI invested money in Ethos Global and heard today that they have gone into liquidation and they are transferring my shares to SOMA - I phoned Crowdcube - they said I should have received an email - I received nothing. The whole thing is a scam and I am disappointed that this is allowed. They shut down their office in Cambridge after people had paid for a year membership fees - and they never replied to emails. They are thieves.
ReplyDelete