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. 

Whats up at Superjam and Beer52?

Fraser Doherty has run Superjam or Eat Super for many years. They raised around £300k on Crowdcube a few years ago. He is also a hands on director Beer52, an Edinburgh based beer subscription site which raised £100k on Angels Den  in 2014 and then another £800k privately via HNW individuals last year.

We have written about both here and here. 

It is difficult to understand the figures as related to both companies. Superjam should, according to the Crowdcube vision, be making over £1.5m profit but instead made £3k on what appears to be a modest turnover. They seem to have lost all of their major UK listings apart from a one jam , heavily discounted offer in Waitrose. They were everywhere.

Beer52 have done better but articles that appeared after the 2016 funding stated that their 2015 turnover was £2.6m and in 2016 it was going to be £8m. Nothing in the accounts filed (to June 17) suggests figures of this size. Losses have become breakeven over the period. Not the vision that Angels Den promoted. 

Anyone any ideas?

Another sticky mess - Superjam in fruitless search for profit

Superjam  - no not some confused 70's tribute band - leaves investors cold with results many miles off target.

Superjam is the brainchild of one very famous young man, Fraser Doherty OBE or 'Jam Boy' . Unfortunately for Crowdcube investors, Fraser's charity work has not translated into a money making business. Well not yet anyway. 

Superjam raised £318k at the start of 2015 for his existing Jam business. He makes Jam. You get the idea. 

He doesnt sell that much Jam though - hence the small profit of £3,000 compared with the Crowdcube projected figure of almost £700,000. We thought he might have paid out massive dividends, but his corporate tax account suggests he just didnt make much. YE September 2017 has a profit tag of £1.3m. His claim that it's stocked in Waitrose seems to have passed its sellby date - the link on the company website doesnt work. The Waitrose site helpfully tells you that this product is unavailable. It's been like this for a while - at least 6 months. The link to the Ocado site doesn't work either and a search there for SJ, brings up Bonne Maman - which is not such a bright idea!

A little giveaway is the TM printed next to every Superjam logo. Surely he knows this is totally meaningless?

He is also heavily involved with Beer52, an Angels Den miscreant and failed Crowdcube pitcher. This is another online business building stability on sand with heavy use of the now infamous discount code to collect 'customers'. We wrote about them here. You can still get a 75% discount 3 years later. Losses are mounting.

All in all, exactly what you would expect. 

What is happening at Superjam?

We wrote about Suparjam's odd pricing policy here

http://fantasyequitycrowdfunding.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=+superjam

The Special Offer has gone but the pricing is still nonsense. Or it would be if their two main trade accounts, Waitrose and Ocado had any stock. Which they dont. So how come the Superjam website is still pushing people to them to buy the jam at a price 50% lower than their own website?

That's all very odd, as are the accounts just filed. Whilst we have to applaud Superjam for being one of the only companies to ever exceed their Crowdcube projections, we suspect this is not the whole story. Low stock levels and lower than anticipated debtors suggests that the company may have been trading at a much lower level than projected. A we dont get to see the turnover, so this can only be conjecture. Certainly the bank is still full of the cash they raised on Crowdcube.

We are sure Doherty stated he would be closing down the old Eat Super company but this has not happened yet.

Another very odd aspect of all of this is their branding. The main reason for the Crowdcube pitch was to create a new look brand with top end gift packaging. But the very name Superjam suggests a Woolworth style product and the new packaging just reinforces this.

All in all a very mixed message.

Superjam pricing a very sticky mess.

We have been following Superjam since they raised over £300k on Crowdcube. 

Their accounts are due out by the end of this month.

Meanwhile they have a very special special offer currently on their website. Their Blueberry and Blackcurrent Jam has, according to the site, been reduced from £35.88 a jar to just £2.99.

OK so this is obviously a typo. Forgiven.

However if you click through to Ocado or Waitrose you can buy the exact same jar of jam for £1.69.

Maybe someone at Superjam needs to take at a look at their pricing policy - if they have one. This just makes them look pretty foolish.