Middleton marshmallow firm’s big cash sweetener
JAMES Middleton, the brother of the Duchess of Cambridge, has secured a £500,000 loan for his personalised marshmallow firm.
Boomf allows customers to upload pictures that it prints on edible marshmallows and sends as gifts. Founded in 2013, it has a turnover of £2.4million and 13 staff at its Berkshire base. But it has yet to turn a profit, and lost £250,000 in its first year.
The loan comes from Barclays’ Innovation Finance scheme, which lends to innovative firms at favourable rates, with the backing of the European Investment Fund.
Middleton said: ‘We’ve grown just shy of 400 per cent from last year – turnover is up from £500,000 – so we’re really happy. We’ve been focusing on expanding. We’ve moved into new factories because we’ve had to make sure everything is scalable. ‘In terms of volumes of sales it’s really difficult to predict, as you’re constantly forecasting with the knowledge that you’re going to blow last year’s weekfor-week figure out of the water.’ Co-founder Andy Bell said the funding would be used for marketing. He added: ‘We’ve exported to over 150 countries, but for some reason Hong Kong is where it works best, so we’re looking at how to expand into other areas of South-East Asia.’ Each £15 box contains nine marshmallows, bearing messages and images sent in with the recipients’ details by customers. The firm prints these on A3-size marshmallow slabs, which are cut by a robot. Middleton said: ‘At the beginning of this year we moved into a new 10,000 sq ft warehouse, which we spent months developing.’