Is this another smash and grab on Crowdcube?

Jewelstreet is back on Crowdcube. It last funded here in 2014 and promised sales of over £30m in 2016. Sadly it has only just managed around a hundredth of this. Maybe this time round they will get to have a better go.

There has been a complete refurbishment of the management suite, led by the main shareholder, Guernsey based businessman Paul Fraser. Mr Fraser is a very busy man so how much time he will spend on this company is questionable. In fact Jewelstreet doesnt even get a mention on his Linkedin page. (Well it may now).

I suppose this all depends if you believe what they say in the pitch. The hard evidence we have is that for 3 years it has been a complete flop. But that is the same with pretty well all of the Crowdcube businesses. Yet you still fund them.

In the first pitch, which smashed its £100k total and finished on £180k, the company told investors via an article in Insider Media, here, that a likely exit date was 2016.

We wrote about them before here

 Non omne quod nitet aurum est!

All that Glitters is not Gold as Crowdcube's Jewel Street file more losses

Jewel Street raised £190k on Crowdcube a while back. The projections used to sell this equity, showed them making over £4m net profit for YE March 2017.

It was always quite an ambitious number and you can forgive them for missing by a few million. Actually they made yet another loss  - this time £400k. Accumulated losses of £1.3m leave the predicted cash position for March 2017 of just under £5m, looking a little unreliable. The BS is embarrassed. 

To keep afloat they have raised another £200k, although this hardly seems likely to last for long.

The opening statement of the Cube pitch goes like this - 

The three founders bring together over 75 years of jewellery, marketing and eCommerce technical experience from Saatchi & Saatchi, Disney, UBS and Nomura.

That is convincing stuff but anyone ask what they did at these companies - floor cleaning? They also stated that their 2013 Christmas sales were over 700% up. Did people bother to ask from what base?

Looks a like a new management team was required and is now in place - turn around time. Possibly a little late for the Cubists who will be diluted out of existence even if the company does cash in. All a little sad and not very Christmassy.