Absolute Bedlam as brewer's numbers yet again prove Crowdcube projections are nonsense.

Bedlam Brewery makes great beer. They raised £515k in 2016 on Crowdcube. Now they are back looking for another £800k. Claims of success do not tally with our numbers. 

In 2016 Bedlam made various projections on revenues. Well lets just say that now we are in 2019, we can see very clearly that they have missed these by a long way. Readers here know this is a familiar story. 

Yet in their current pitch on Crowdcube there is no mention of this shortfall. They simply state that the CAGR is plus 41% over the last 3 years. As we keep on saying an increase of CAGR from a tiny base is of no use whatsoever. CAGR should be banned. In this instance the use of it to extrapolate the next 3 years growth is farcical. 

You may decide that the perks and beer are worth supporting and we wouldnt argue with that. But for goodness sake guys be a little more honest with your investors and drinkers. You have promised Bob Beamon and delivered Felicity Kendal. The reason for this latest round is pretty simple - you need cash as the sales are so far short of your plans that they haven't produced enough. 

At the very least investors should be asking why the company has delivered such small revenues on the back of a £500k plus investment? Are the next three years projections sensible and will cash run out again. There was no mention in 2016 of a new raise of another £800k 3 years later. 

Full Green - great vegetables sealed in a non recyclable long life plastic bag for the downright lazy.

Cauliflower is far more delicious than Eric the Greek's ear makes it look. Why then would you stuff it into an non recyclable plastic long life bag?

We have been following Cauli Rice, now Full Green, since the couple started on Crowdcube with their first business Righteous Salad Dressings. Righteous turned out to be a little disappointing and so they moved onto Cauliflower. 

They are now back on Crowdcube for what is probably a record breaking number of rounds for any of the same two directors. They simply need more money. 

The raise is going very well and they are consummate artists when it comes to the story and presentation. Hats off. The trick here is that they make it look like their process and end product produces the carb benefits. Actually that is all down to the simple cauliflower.

But with another hat on  - a tin one worn when looking into the real guts of a business, Im not convinced this is a good bet. Reviews of their products are and have been consistently very mixed. The bad ones are to be honest, not for pre watershed reading.

Full Green have also never managed to come in on budget - Righteous never did either. And like the switch from Righteous when that didnt work, FG are now launching a brand new product - cereal - which is in a brand new market. This is not being done on the back of a solidly built brand with break even points reached, with existing products. In fact rather the opposite. They never really cover off the reasons for the budget misses or for the continued losses.

I have little doubt it will fund but I am really struggling to see why. Stuffing freeze dried veg into long life plastic bags is from the 90's. Fresh Cauliflower is cheap and keeps very well. It takes 2 mins to make a fresh Riced Cauliflower dish and is much cheaper and I would say better for you. Why help increase the amount of plastic waste on our planet? We are desperate to do exactly the opposite.



So it has just been revealed - as nobody bothered to ask this Q before, that Full Green use Non RECYCLABLE plastic pouches for their processed cauliflower etc. They are very keen to tell everyone that they have sold 5m of these bits of plastic which will have gone into landfill, been sold to Malaysia where they are sitting in huge waste dumps polluting the surrounds. So why is this so? Well it turns out that the very process used to make their products demands non recyclable plastic. How many investors knew that? You are destroying the planet.

We estimate that if you put this plastic waste from Full Green end to end it would run from Landsend to north of Glasgow. What would that cost them and their shareholders to clean up?

Oh and finally the term Cauli Rice is now off the menu - or in the US at any rate. The Rice lobby, a powerful body in the States, were getting a little fed up with Rice This and Rice That. So new packaging and branding has been required - is that paid for as part of this round?

Good luck to all who sail in her. 

Beta Testing

If any Members of ECF.Buzz have not received their invitation to take part in the beta testing currently underway, then please do email me and we can get that invite sent out again. 

Thanks. My email is rob@ecfsolutions.co.uk

It's a Website

We are very happy to announce the birth of our new Website  - Beta ECF.Buzz

Beta was born today at 3 minutes passed 4pm, weighing in at 4mbs, after a week long labour. 

The Live Launch (Christening) of Beta will take place in early July and is eagerly anticipated by all of those who wish to see equity crowdfunding flourish instead of going down the tubes.

Baby viewings at still available at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ecf-buzz-the-crowd-investors-information-centre/19804529/ 

The ECF.Buzz Family. 

White Car Crash starting to reveal its secrets.

White Car has crashed - of that there is no doubt. Now in liquidation, not long ago it was raising £800k on Crowdcube with a very upbeat message from founder and CEO Mark Douglas Strachan. 

It was on Crowdcube twice in fact - the final time just a few months ago at the end of 2018 when it took another £200k off investors. The Statement of Affairs shows a deficit of over £2m. Not bad for such a short life. 

We are unearthing the real picture, thanks to shareholders. Large salaries seem to involved, which is always a no no in our book for start ups using others people's cash. 

More to come - if you are an ex shareholder then please do get in touch. This one should go to the FOS. 

Where are Property Moose?

Any Crowdcube investors in DFI Financial Services Ta Property Moose have any clue where they have gone? 

Accounts are due out this month and will hopefully reveal some facts about odd filings at CH. No activity on Twitter for over 12 months and no website open to non members. We had heard they had been sold but little evidence of that. 

Very poor reviews here https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/propertymoose.co.uk suggest all is not well.

It appears that some or most of the proeprty/s have been moved to a newco run by the same guy - UK Diversified Property plc. No filings of any great interest yet.

Readers might like to look at this -  https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=75036542

Hope you are ok out there guys. Mooooooooooosssssssssssssssssse.

UPDATE - Andrew Gardiner was good enough to explain what happened at Property Moose - see below - 

The company you refer to is DFI Financial Services Ltd. This was originally Crowd Fin Ltd and conducted the funding round on CrowdCube. We did this once in 2014 and not twice. 

We have subsequently conducted 5 further rounds of funding with VC and institutional investors. Part of that, was to create a revised group so the holding company is now DFI Group Ltd and the Crowdcube shareholders have shares in DFI Group through a share for share exchange. DFI Group holds 100% of the share capital of DFI Financial Services. This was done a number of years ago to remove the regulated business from our "topco" to reduce risk on shareholder exposure. Everyone was treated the same, contacted by email and letter and the shares were swapped 1 for 1 with clearance from HMRC. A large national law firm dealt with this for us.

The Property Moose model did not work after 5-years of trying and us raising c.£2-2.5m of funding to grow. We had many members but the structure of the single SPVs and the introduction of MIFID II and the risks that posed caused it to not be commercially viable. The movement in the property market and uncertainty around Brexit also didn't help.

We spotted this back in 2017 so spent the next period ensuring that we protected investor capital and gave them a solution that put them in the best position possible which was to suggest the set up of the fund that they would own. This was not a decision we could make, we made the suggestion and under our investment structure, property shareholders voted and a decision was made by at least a 75% majority. c.99.8% approve the transfer to UKDPP. UKDPP is a registered fund with the FCA and is 100% owned by the shareholders with its own team and cash-flow. It has diversification over 109 properties and means that there is no "platform risk" as with crowdfunding as it is completely stand-a-lone and a plc. 

That meant the end of our BTL business but it was by far the best thing to do in the interests of our members which is our primary concern in respect of the platform. Although a negative for DFI, the suggested approach meant that DFI no longer continued to chase a model that did not commercially work and could have put us in financial difficulty if changes weren't made. As well as being in the best interests of our members, it is also the best option for our shareholders. This allows us to pause, retain the capital we have left and then look at the best ways to maximise shareholder value. 

The current PM investments that remain are being exited as the terms come to an end/projects complete. At that stage, we will be looking at the platform and re-launching it or assessing the best option for shareholder value then. You mention we have no website, that is not correct but you are not a member so you can't log in. It is just closed to new people and only their for existing members to monitor their investments. 

The aim since identifying the issues with the model was to slash costs, protect members and put us in the best position to then look at re-launching on an updated basis with something that works. Since then, we have cut our cost base by 10x and are in a very strong position financially to meet our strategic aims. 

We update our shareholders as best we can when events occur and I am expecting to send our next update out over the summer. These are sent via email. 

I have looked at your blog and note your comments that we did not give people much time to vote on the transfer to UKDPP. This is incorrect and I would appreciate it if you corrected the false statement. The first email with the vote was sent in July 2018. The final decision as to which option people voted for was then open until the valuations were conducted which gave until 1 January 2019 for batch 1, 1 March 2019 for batch 2 and 1 May 2019. As you can see, we gave 6, 8 and 10 months for people to consider and make a decisions so I do not think it's fair for you to make your statement that we did not give enough time. 

In summary, we continue to focus our efforts on securing shareholder value. We have a family office, a EU funded VC and a regulated wealth management group as institutional investors as well as management and the Crowd Cube shareholders. A lot has gone on since 2014 in the market and in the macro-climate. Who could have foreseen the changes in government BTL tax laws or Brexit and the continued uncertainty that brings and the impact on VC funding. Unfortunately, the SPV business model did not work but rather than risking investor capital by introducing platform risk or risking shareholder investments by running a model that didn't work, we took, what I believe, is the mature and sensible approach to take positive action, make changes and live to fight another day.

Full Clear becomes invisible and tells investors it's time to close down.

Nothing very Full or Clear here. 377 Crowdcube investors gave this company £248k in January 2018. Now just 16 months later the Directors (we use the term loosely) are closing via a VCL. 

Full Clear had a solution to cleaning beer pipes. Well it clearly wasn't very good or cleaning them the old way was fine. There has been little or no communication between Full Clear and its Crowdcube shareholders. In January 2018, Crowdcube were happy to allow this pitch onto its site with a pre money value of £1.7m. So where has that value gone? 

Crowdcube are the nominee here, according to CH. Mind you it also states that Crowdcube are the nominee in the fiasco that is Ethos Global Ltd but Crowdcube have denied this in writing. So who knows. Not Crowdcube for sure.

As you might expect ECF.Buzz had them heavily marked down recently as their FB page has nothing since Nov 18 and Twitter is off line.