Angelberry's sluggish death is all to familiar to Equity CF investors

Ryan Pasco and James Taylor applied to have their 2014 Crowdcube funded company quietly struck off in May 2018. Now in June 2019 is is still listed at CH as active with the Voluntary Strike Off suspended. Someone didnt like it. 

Angelberry stopped functioning as a company 2 years ago - we have written about them here 

So Crowdcube investors not only have a dead company but they cannot at the moment claim loss relief. We do not know why someone has stopped the striking off but a guess whom be that there is some dispute between the founders and shareholder/s or directors that has not been settled. It is crap way to run a business even after it has failed.

Are Crowdcube helping? Silly question.

This is just one of many examples and it is a very good reason for investors to join ECF.Buzz, where they know they will get up to date reliable information and if they bother to carry out the due diligence we have designed, they might just have avoided this crater. Site launching for real on 10th July 2019.

Our Buzz Rating for Angelberry has been under 20/100 since the start of 2017. 

Crowdcube start 2018 as they intend to go on; with yet another sad story of failure

Angelberry have been defrosted. The took £200k off Crowdcube investors in 2014. Now they have for first time since, communicated with those investors to say Goodbye, Cheerio, So Long Suckers.

This is another one we called - see here

Here is the full text of the first and final communication from the Angelberry founders - the opening line is quite brilliant! The rest is quite sad and just shows what an utter load of kack the idea these guys had, was. The sums mentioned are highly doubtful!

Before you get stuck in, we will have some good news in the next few days about a pitch that we have been helping and that we feel is worth taking a look at. So watch this space. One thing for sure is that it doesnt include any fraud.

This a summary of what follows -


Hi Suckers -

We have spent all your money and so will closing down now.

Your money helped us travel around the word for 2 years and have a ball.

None of the plans we mentioned to you on Crowdcube worked. They all came to shit.

So until the next time, so long Suckers. 

Hi All, Sorry for the delay in this update, it’s been a tough couple of years and we have unfortunately had to take the decision to close AngelBerry ltd due to a lack of growth and profitability. To give you an overall view of what we have been up to please see below. What did we use our CrowdCube Raise on? - Used our CrowdCube raise to buy our trade show stand, which we then shipped to Trade shows in Mumbai, Paris, Johannesburg. These shows were planned to recruit and sign up new Master Developers after our initial success in Dubai - We had several strong leads, but we could not find anyone to take on the Master Developer licence for anywhere in Europe or India, which was our main avenue for growth as per our business plan - In Johannesburg we signed up one franchisee for Richards Bay (North of Durban). No one wanted to take on the Development rights for any other African countries. We had hoped to find developers for Mozambique, Botswana, Kenya and Nigeria - Our new office staff hires that we took on pre-funding were eventually let go once the shows had taken place and we had not secured any MD’s. Without the planned income from the sale of new territories, or cash flow and funding was massively decreased UAE - When we raised, we had contracts in place for stores across the GCC – 80 stores in the coming years. We were expecting big growth and store numbers from our UAE developers, however they did not stick to the agreed store schedule, nor did the expansion into Saudi Arabia or the rest of the GCC happen as promised and contractually agreed upon - This lack of growth hit our potential to grow further as development overall was slow and showed a slow return to potential franchisees. Our master developer was not keeping to their agreed schedule because of a poor return on their investment from the first two stores - Due to their failure to open more stores and deliver on their promises, including payment for stock and royalties, a level of distrust built up between us and our UAE MD’s – they stopped all communication in 2016 South Africa - Our franchisee signed from the Johannesburg trade show opened her store in Richards Bay in October 2015, and was then closed by our MD’s in March 2016 due to repeated breaches of her agreement, failure to pay royalties, failure to pay for stock, failure to maintain correct and true records and repeated failure in food hygiene standards - The expected NuMetro cinema expansion did not take off due to low sales volume, they currently have one location open in Pretoria. James met with the directors to discuss continued growth and roll out of the kiosk, but due to low sales and a relatively high build cost per kiosk they did not want to continue the roll out - We put a lot of effort into trying to secure the Food Lovers Market deal with our SA MD’s, after running 5 trial stores across different demographics and store layouts (Cape Town Food Lovers Eatery / Food Lovers Market Nelspruit / Caltex Cryildene / Caltex Fresh Stop / Caltex Louis Trichardt ) the sales were not strong enough after our 6 month trial and did not return the required level to warrant a roll out across their stores for the footprint we needed. Even running smaller kiosks in the Caltex stores did not get us to the right level. We also tried to increase revenue through diversified products including freakshakes, waffles and donuts - Because of this, our planned partnership with FLM did not transpire and there was no national roll out. Our plan for an AngelBerry hard pack product on their shelves did not come off either due to the unsuccessful trial stores Mauritius - Our MD sold to someone local 2 years or and left the country to focus on the South African development Overall - We didn’t get the required number of master developer sign up during our initial trade shows which stunted out growth projection, causing us to pivot and look for commercial opportunities instead - Without MD’s or franchisees signing up, we didn’t have the required cash flow to move forward and as a result we needed to take on more investment, this enabled us to keep the company afloat whilst we tried to secure the FLM deal - We had to sell our city centre location to help keep the company going, in additional we raised an extra £170,000 internally - In September 2016 we had to close our Imperial Park store due to the rent review resulting in a rental increase from £17 per sqft up to £35 per sqft making the store unprofitable, and as a result we executed our break clause - Despite extra funding, new product launches, new menus and new branding, we could not increase the franchised store revenues enough due to the seasonality of the product - We focused on growth which required funding to keep us going, and as repeated deals did not come off and the funding ran out, we are left with no option but to close AngelBerry Ltd We put everything into growing the brand and company, expanded into overseas territories, negotiated with supermarkets, cinemas and service stations and gave it our best shot. We are extremely proud of what we achieved, unfortunately the required deals did not materialise and after 5 years of trying the planned development and growth of AngelBerry did not come to fruition. We apologise to all of our investors but thank you for your support and belief in us. Kind Regards, James and Ryan

Another Crowdcube business abandons ship.

AngelBerry Frozen Yogurt raised £200k on Crowdcube in 2014. Now their website is closed and has been for sometime. Accounts were filed late but now they are, they show a company way past the edge. Insolvent is the technical term and this is the second filing showing this. 

The company was due to be making profits of £1.7m in 2016; instead they made a £10k loss. Predcitable? Oh yes, this is Crowdcube, whose own accounts show a £5m plus loss against a predicted £1m plus profit. 

Two tweets since Sept 2016. Only 695 followers. 

Meanwhile no doubt, the successful entrepreneurs portrayed in their Crowdcube pitch have moved onto other ventures. Ryan Pasco, one of the founders, has set up 2 businesses since Angel Berry funded on CC - neither looking good. He is sometimes British and sometimes Australian in the CH filings. His mate James Taylor hasnt been so active - maybe he was actually trying to make Angelberry work?

The business was supposed to be sold this year for over £14m - their figures in the Crowdcube pitch.

Right from the start in 2014, all projections have been way off target.  

As we keep saying - this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to companies that have not closed officially but have died.

We wrote about them before here   - it was a death foretold. 

Angelberry aims high and shoots low - like most Crowdcube successes

This is now the new norm - fantastical projections met head on by sober realities for Crowdcube investors.

This company raised £200k on Crowdcube in 2014. Its still functioning but has failed to get anywhere near to the revenues and profits its fantasy projections sold to the Crowdcube investors. 

Accounts for 2014 and just over half of 2015 (the date was changed for some reason) show heavy accumulated losses of £350k against projected profits estimated at £300k plus. Promised deals with units in Africa and the ME (in the pitch there were over 50 contractual commitments quoted) have come to nout.

We wrote to them to ask politely why they were so far off their targets. We had no response.

In one of the more ludicrous Crowdcube moments, their pitch talks about a possible exit in Q1 of 2017 at 8.5 times earnings ie according to the fantasy projections that would bring in £14.5m anytime now. 

More Trumponics. No really these guys are great - Im telling you. Really really great. Dont believe the fake figures at CH. 

Where are they now? 3 of the Best - Our version.

Just Park raised £3.5m on Crowdcube on a business model that has now been shown to be a little fluffy.

The Crowdcube plans showed the company making losses in 2015 but only £400k not the £1.7m just filed.

We said at the time that the main flaw with their car park sharing model was that the people projected to make all the money were not the owners of the spaces but Just Park. This has proven to be spot on. There are numerous examples for the past year of people booking a space and arriving only to find that the space is taken and there is no way at such short notice to sort out the problem. Some people end up with £100 parking fines as a result. Customer service appears to be poor. Looking at Trust Pilot reviews, we are struck by the complete contrast between the 5 start reviews and the 1 star reviews - not much in between. A bit like Marmite.

When we questioned JP on this flaw they just said na - it's not a problem. We now have £1.3m of extra losses to prove it. They may yet get to grips with it but we doubt they will be able to scale to a level that will see any CC investors getting returns. Their main hope now must be that JP don,t fold just yet. There has been more money raised and will no doubt be more in the future - all diluting the CC shareholders. 4 of the Directors left in 2015.

GrubKlub

Yet another internet business that only makes losses, Grubclub or Klub, showed exceptional growth in their Crowdcube pitch when they raised £288k in January 2015. They used the unlikely metric of GMV to big up their sales pitch or show traction as they put it. GMV for those not in the know is the total sales value for a company that is say commission only based and gives a highly misleading image of a company's size. So for example the GMV for Grubklub in 2014 was a projected £400k (which at the time of the pitch was in reality an historic figure). The real sales value as reported in the filed accounts at CH for this was £34,994. Now the 2015 accounts are also filed and show a net revenue of £34,189. In the Crowdcube pitch this 2015 figure was given as £157k on a GMV of £1.7m. From the figures it looks like the real GMV was around £400,000 - so zero growth.

We emailed Grubclub and were told that our numbers were all wrong; although when asked they failed to provide the numbers that were correct. Either the filed accounts are wrong in which case this is for HMRC to look into, or they are way off target.

Angel Berry

Raised £190k in 2014 on Crowdcube. Despite the fantastic projections that Crowdcube allowed them to use to sell the equity - Angel Berry have made actual real losses of over £340k to date  - breaking most records in 2015 by filing losses of £150k against Crowdcube projections showing EBITDA of £612k. That's worth a gold medal surely.