TROUBLED fashion-to-homewares retailer Joules has this morning announced its intention to call in administrators.
The upmarket company, known for its wellies and country-style clothing, said in a statement to the city that talks with strategic investors aimed at securing a cornerstone investment in an equity raise, and discussions regarding a bridge financing proposal to allow it to continue attempts at refinancing, have not been successful.
With those talks now terminated, it was announced that the board has resolved to file a notice of intention to appoint Will Wright, Ryan Grant and Chris Pole of Interpath Advisory Limited as administrators to the Company and Joules Limited, and Will Wright and Ryan Grant to The Garden Trading Company Limited and Joules Developments Limited, “as soon as reasonably practicable”.
Joules said it was taking the action to protect creditors. Trading in Joules’ shares has now been suspended.
Joules’ failure comes amid a cost-of-living crisis that has undermined consumer confidence and created challenging conditions for retailers. It comes just days after Made.com, the online furniture retailer, collapsed into administration, with its brand and intellectual property acquired on the same day by Next for £3.4 million. Next did not take on any staff, meaning hundreds of jobs at Made.com were likely to go.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here