Kate’s brother gets £800k bail-out from his friends
MANY feared James Middleton had bitten off more than he could chew when his marshmallow business racked up a £250k loss. Luckily, the Duchess of Cambridge’s younger brother has pals with deep pockets and an appetite for risk.The serial cake entrepreneur has raised £800,000 from ‘friends of friends’ to bail out his Boomf enterprise, despite having two cake companies and one wine company struck off the Companies House register earlier this year.
Middleton’s ten investors include Jo Staveley, the former managing director of Cath Kidston and shoemaker L.K. Bennett. Nick Jenkins, the founder of personalised greeting card company Moonpig.com, is also back for second helpings of Middleton’s marshmallow empire — he dug deep for the company’s £1 million cash call last year. As I reported last month, Middleton and his business partner, Andy Bell, originally hoped to raise £1.5million in their latest funding round to ‘expand and diversify’ the company. So the pair are perhaps disappointed that none of Middleton’s wealthy family have coughed up — not even James’s ‘black sheep’ uncle, Gary Goldsmith, who gave him an £11,000 loan after he dropped out of Edinburgh University.
Instead, the pair, who have converted a loan into shares to cover the shortfall, are banking on ‘international expansion’ in Taiwan and Hong Kong to boost profits. ‘The Far East is a fair chunk of our business,’ says Bell, who claims Boomf’s sales are up 600 per cent since January.
Middleton founded Boomf in 2013 and named it ‘after the noise a marshmallow makes when it falls through your letterbox’.
This week, the company branched out into ‘Buntella’ bunting, where customers can put photos or messages on nine flags for £25.
‘We have no shortage of ideas,’ says Bell. ‘But we’ll keep them under wraps until we launch them.’
Roll out the personalised bunting.