James Middleton sold Boomf to an Estonian businessman at an extreme loss

Just FYI, I did not see this story until I saw a commenter reference it in the Carole Middleton post this week. I truly miss some stuff and you can always send me links and leads at my Twitter, @KaiseratCB. This is the kind of story you should send me! Because when it comes to the Daily Mail, they’ll write up the story and then bury it. Hard. Which is why I didn’t see it. So, you know how James Middleton had a lil’ marshmallow company called Boomf? You know how Boomf was losing millions of dollars ever since he started it? You know how gathered up more than $2 million in investment to grow his business, and you know how Boomf was still just a sad little operation which got caught making Nazi marshmallows? Yeah, well true story: all of the money is gone and James sold Boomf.

Made from liquid sugar stabilised by gelatin, it’s a joyfully insubstantial confection. But, sadly, Boomf, the company which charged £19.99 for sending a box of nine personalised marshmallows through the post, has proved equally fragile. The firm, founded by James Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s younger brother, fell into administration last month with heavy losses after eight years. Last week its creditors — many of them also small businesses — were told that they face getting just 25p in the £1 of their money back.

Boomf’s well-heeled investors have had to face up to the not-so-sweet reality that they have poured hard cash into a commercially flimsy proposition. Some £2.2 million was raised by Middleton and ploughed into the business, which had branched out into other postal gifts and cards. Its accumulated losses stand at £2 million. Rather embarrassingly for Middleton, 34, who called himself the ‘Wonka in chief’, shareholders include his brother-in-law James Matthews, married to his older sister Pippa.

Certainly, the Estonian businessman who snapped up the failing business this month for the relatively small sum of £300,000 (Middleton reckoned it was worth £10 million in an interview in 2015) will be pleased with his bargain. As will Boomf’s 29 staff, based in Reading, who will keep their jobs. Not so happy, one imagines, are the shareholders who will surely be rueing their investment.

Nick Jenkins is said to have put in at least £250,000, while Pippa’s husband, hedge fund manager James Matthews, invested £100,000. Others who bankrolled the venture include royal chum Charlie Gilkes, who founded the Bunga Bunga night club where Prince Harry liked to party. Another shareholder is Quintessentially Ventures Ltd, a ‘private members’ investment club for sophisticated investors’. Middleton said that he had drawn around £2.2 million in investment in Boomf in total. He commented in an interview: ‘This is not a business propped up by friends or family. That calibre of investors do not just give handouts. They are people who want us to make a return for them.’

[From The Daily Mail]

There’s more at the Mail: James had to pay back £414,000 to creditors first, because apparently Boomf had not been paying its bills for a while. The company owed everyone from print companies to Facebook and two digital marketing firms. Boomf apparently found itself in a “cash crisis” rather suddenly last year “owing to business costs,” which is weird because… the fundamentals of the business had not changed overnight. Boomf is now James’s third failed business, but perhaps the fourth time’s the charm: James has already started Ella & Co, a raw dog food company. How long before he drives that company into the ground through mismanagement and stupidity? What’s the over/under on the dog food company accidentally poisoning dogs?

Last year, James and his wife Alizee bought a £1.45 million home in Bucklebury close to his parents. What a complete and utter money-laundering mess this family is. If I had been one of the investors in Boomf, I would be so f–king pissed that James had already started another company AND that he recently purchased a seven-figure home near his mummy.

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