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Friday 27 April 2018

Crowdcube's normal service is resumed as Superjam miss their EBITDA by £1.3m



Superjam raised £308k in 2015 on Crowdcube. Now accounts for YE January 2018 show profits of £15k against the targeted £1.3m EBITDA they published in their pitch. What the accounts really show is little activity for a company on its way to this impressive number.


Superjam was set up by budding entrepreneur and philanthropist Fraser Doherty when he as 16. We have struggled to find any real indication that this business has ever made large sums. It says in their PR they do and that is what Crowdcube bought into. But a profit £15k isn't a profit of £1.3m or really even on the same planet. 

Fraser has other businesses, one of which, Beer52, has also used Crowdcube. He is an MBE for his charity work. Well it couldnt have been his business.

They made a big thing of their charity work in the Crowdcube pitch - 

SuperJam is also giving back to the community via our registered charity The SuperJam Tea Parties, which runs hundred of free tea parties for the elderly. The company plans to use your investment to develop and launch additional brands within the same market, such as jams for children, peanut butters, honeys and maple syrup.

According to figures at OSCR 2017 activity was £1,200 spent £1,200 received. We havent found any new brands, in any market. Although there are mentions of honey and peanut butter on the Korean site but they dont appear to be for sale. 

The last tweet on their page is promoting the 2015 Crowdcube raise. They have 700 followers. The last post on FB was July 2016.

This is what they said on the CC pitch - 

  • Sales growth will primarily come from increased distribution in UK supermarkets - such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco and The Co-operative.

Waitrose are only stocking the Blueberry and Balckcurrent jam and that is only on line. Its on special offer. We couldn't find it for sale anywhere else in the UK and no other stockist is listed on the Superjam website. 

We have written about Jam Boy several times. But obviously not as many times as he has written about himself. News about the progress of Superjam being exported to all four corners of the globe seems to have been exaggerated.  

Just when we thought that the news of Revolut's paper gain might make some sense for Crowdcube investors, here we are again with normal service resumed. Equity being sold on false information and fantasy projections. 

3 comments:

  1. I didn't see the original Superjam pitch, but I'm betting that the pre money valuation was bonkers high too! :(

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  2. Around £2.5m which is ok if the PR was correct but it doesnt look as though it has ever had sales of any significance and now no listings in any UK supermarket. Mind you for CC £2.5m worth of cr!p is cheap cr!p.

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  3. I am not a business guru but I think I have spotted the flaw in the strategy here. This boy appears to have invented jam. Had he (or perhaps CC investors) done a bit of research they would have discovered that someone else had already invented jam some time ago. A quick glance on Ocado shows that jam is available from quite a few producers, priced from Waitrose essentials at 17.6p per 100g all the way up to £1.09 per 100g for Harvey Nicks strawberry jam with champagne. Jam boy is selling his jam for £1.41 per 100g. As a I say, I am not the entrepreneurial genius this young chap obviously is, but I think that trying to sell what is basically a commodity into a crowded market at about a third more than the most expensive alternative with zero brand recognition or differentiating features might be an uphill battle. In fairness he has made an effort on his website, with handy tips like try jam on toast, but even with this has not enabled him to take the jam world by storm.

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