Fund on Crowdcube wait six months and then close with massive debts. Walk Away. A Classic from Country Matters

This one is hard to believe. Only months ago, the Directors of Country Matters were on Crowdcube telling everyone what a great investment this was. In January 2019 they went into administration with over £600k of unpaid bills and loans. Crowdcube shareholders are not even mentioned in the Statement of Affairs. 119 of them invested £130,000 in May 2018.

Crowdcube is an FCA regulated platform - just in case you wondered how this sort of thing is allowed.

As the Founders state, Country Matters dealt in Classics. Well this has to go down as one of those.

They have taken HSBC for £250k and Lendingcrowd for another £123,000.

According to the filed report, the company lost a significant customer in 2017 - roughly 25% of their turnover, as Countywide Farmers plc went into Administration.

Now we are just guessing but I'll bet my hat that this wasnt revealed to Crowdcube investors in May of 2018 on the FCA regulated platform. Is it reasonable to assume that at least some of them might have had second thoughts about investing if they had had this information? Given that 25% of the company's revenue had sailed into the sunset. And given that now it is the main reason the Directors are reporting for the business' failure.

It reminds me of a car purchase a friend had some years back. The vendor told him that the engine was new. He bought the car. The engine packed in. He took it back. 'Ooooh said the vendor  - the engine was new - it was new to the car'.

It is odd that in the whole of their report, which goes into some detail on the business in 2017 and 2018, there is no mention at all of the Crowdcube funding round. This is shown at CH as being completed in May of 2018. By November 2018 we are told that the company had some serious cash issues and was heavily overdrawn. So simple Q - where is the bleeding money mate?

As in other cases we are highlighting at the moment, it is almost as if the Administrators  - Begbies Traynor, Birmingham, have ignored this important cash inflow. But that would be negligence so it is unlikely.

Let's hope they had some fun along the way and that someone somewhere will make them pay for it. Many small creditors listed. An absolute shocker.

Chupachipcake hits the skids and all investors are wiped out again. Three cheers for Crowdcube.

You begin to wonder how all of this is going to end. Chupamobile took £740k off 147 Crowdcube investors in 2014. By 2016 it was projecting £1.3m net profits. Nice. 

We had this one banged to rights - our current Buzz Rating on Chupamobile was 15/100 down from 20. Anything under 20 is a goner without Jesus.

We wait to see what collateral damage there is and what state the business has wound up in. I doubt it will be pretty. Tax relief is available as usual. So now Crowdcube have helped waste over £50m since they started in 2011. Knighthoods all round boys. Blasting.

The end is Righteous as founders hand over Dressing of Salads to others.

Righteous raised £215k in two rounds via Crowdcube. Despite several senior level listings, the salad dressers never did manage to make their projections a reality. Then they had an idea - why not create another company making plastic packaged, long life, boil in the bag cauliflower rice and offer shares to existing backers. And so Full Green aka Cauli Rice, was born.

We only tell you this because Righteous has now been given to others. According to the founders there was no financial transaction. 

Whilst gifting shareholders in Righteous free shares in FullGreen, is an honourable gesture, it only really works if FG makes it. Now with over £4m invested, it has a US factory, WW sales and is still losing money. We asked for news but were politely told to bugger off. They dont like us. Troll is a word they use for us. 

Reviews for the plastic sachets of pre made, long life caulirice and a few other recipes, are mixed - that's us being kind. But what do we know about start ups? That's what they told us; as well as to bugger off. 

Time will tell. 

Shareholders we talk to are not impressed by the PR which continues to talk everything up and the facts which continue to show missed projections. 

And do we really need a plastic sachet to create cauliflower rice. Using a fresh cauliflower bought and stored for a week in the fridge, you can make many individual helpings of delicious and nutritional caulirice in a around 1 minute per portion. Have we gone so crazy that we need it in a PLASTIC packet? That is very sad, if true.   

Kokoon - what is the real story here?

Kokoon are currently well on their way to raising more money on Seedrs, they have already used Crowdcube and more importantly Kickstarter. The constant stream of complaints on the KS pitch suggests that things are not quite as the CEO has told investors on Seedrs. 

We all know that complaints on a platform like KS can be exaggerated - people with an axe to grind, people who just like complaining etc etc. However, there will be over 4,700 comments on their still unfulfilled KS campaign page as of this weekend. 99% are not complimentary. 

Customers have been misled is the common theme. Stock that has arrived is on the whole disappointing, refunds are slow or not processed, delivery dates are a joke only surpassed by their communications, mechandise breaks and arrives broken. And the final straw is that the sold software to give users sleep feedback and imporatantly give them help in sleeping, is simply not available yet. 

We have held off writing more on this as they appeared to making some positive progress. But really enough is enough when the CEO states on Seedrs that most of the KS customers have been satisfied and the failure rate is under 3%. You wonder if he has read the comments. They are getting rapidly worse. 

Here are a few examples - from just the past few days

I am again requesting a full refund of my money. I haven’t heard from you. Please respond.

• Yes it is all very disappointing and discouraging to hear about the issues people are having with this Best of all possible worlds, sleep aid headphone.

  It appears to be anything but. Broken parts, Poor sound, non functioning features, and the rest make one feel the wait was not worth it.

  Now 3 years since the original shipping estimate and I, like many of you, are still waiting for delivery.

  I had many chances to get a refund, but decided to wait it out.

  Now, I am not so sure.

Never received any communication about shipping. I confirmed my address in January 2018. I would like a refund as well.

Was so excited to see the headphones had arrived. Lifted them out of the impressive carry case inside the box and ... snap ... plastic bit around the metal post snapped off. Jesus H Christ. Didn't even get to put them on and they are broken. What now?

..................................................

In my experience I have never seen such a shambles pretending to be a business.  

Now we read that Kokoon have stopped issuing refunds - the excuse being that the factory has committed to making the remaining KS stock - which we should point out has not been delivered and there is no date given for its delivery. This is shoddy customer management. It is shoddy everything. In fact is it legal? i was under the impression that a UK product manufacturer selling on line had to offer a 14 day no quibble money back guarantee after they have delivered the goods. Well Kokoon have not even delivered and they are refusing to give backers refunds - 3-4 years after taking their money. 

Hop Stuff over trades and winds up in Court. We told them this would happen.

This is sad. Hop Stuff was a great story and in the hands of a sensible businessman, it could have grown into a success. Driven by a ridiculous plan to take over the brewing world, James Yeomans has single handedly jeopardised his own dream and possibly lost Crowdcube investors over £1m. 

UPDATE - this is a live story and we have just been informed by the lawyers acting for the Petitioners that the petition has been dismissed as the debt has been paid on full. So what was that all about ???

We dont know the full story yet but no one is answering Qs. We do know that a Petition to Wind Up the company was brought by Construction and Shopfitting Limited on 19/02/2019 and as far as we can tell the case has not yet been heard. Their 3 bars are open for business as usual. Bu thten they have been set up as separate legal entities. Where does that leave Crowdcube shareholders?

Accounts have had date changes and are now well overdue. Not long ago Hop Stuff raised over £800k on Crowdcube. Have we been here before??

Clearly for things to have got to this stage, it must be serious. We warned him a while back not to over trade. Now this.........



We hear the shouts of the lite touch, free trade, meat eaters -  'well its a free world and he can do what he likes with his own business'. Not so fast. When he took other peoples cash - in multiple Crowdcube rounds - well over 1000 of them - he gave up that Divine Right. He had duties to his shareholders. One of them was to be sensible.

There have been a few odd things pinging about from Hop Stuff recently. At the start of March, so after the above Petition, James Yeomans emailed investors asking them if they wanted to buy a small placing of A shares. It was promoted as a deal not to be missed. Given what we now know, isn't that a little strange?

Let us hope that this can all be resolved and that Hop Stuff, wings partially clipped can carry on in more considered fashion to grow and prosper. Nout wrong with their Beers.

E-Sign and Blanco Nino back on Crowdcube again with incredible numbers.

This is THE problem. Two old Crowdcube fundees have returned for more cash. But in the pitch there is little mention of the previous raise or even failed attempts. There is no mention or even discussion of the massive gap between their earlier projections and reality. Valuations are upwards only.  

Now we dont wish to comment on the investment opportunities as such. Investors must make up their own minds. 

We would just like to point out that whilst not supplying information does mean that that information cannot be misleading - we assume that's why they have done this - it is not clear, fair or helpful. Investors are your clients too. 

Crowdcube states at the bottom of every pitch that each one has passed its own due diligence tests and is not in any way misleading, unfair or unclear. We would beg to differ.

Why should investors, many of whom maybe new to Crowdcube, not be given what we consider to be essential information - ie what figures did the management of these two companies tell previous investors they expected to hit? Simple and factual; clear, fair and not misleading. It directly effects the current valuation and any calculation punters might make on ROI - given the new set of projections. It talks to the core of the offer - the management's ability to judge its market and extract maximum value from it over a given time. 

So Crowdcube why do you consistently miss off this information? Look, no one expects start ups to hit their projections but there are near misses and out of orbit experiences. Surely it is upto investors to decide which is which. They cannot, if you don't give them the information

We have it on file, so we know the numbers.  

If you join ECF.Buzz you too can have this vital insight into these investment opportunities - take a look..... https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ecf-buzz-the-crowd-investors-information-centre/19804529

Investors - taking back control. 

Crowdcube crashed by Freetraders

Freetrade's record breaking £4m raise on Crowdcube has crashed the site and has been removed. Much to the irritation of wannabe investors and the humiliation of the platform.

Oddly they knew this was going to be a massive rush but their tech doesnt seem able to cope. They are trying again tomorrow.

We are more interested in whether this is a good investment - well by the looks of it far more interested than the investors who piled in and took it up to over £600k in minutes - without reading the offer.

It seems no matter what they do, Crowdcube Carry on Regardless. Wonder who Hattie Jacques would have played?