Indie retailers worried as online platform apologises for non-payment
Online selling platform Trouva has issued an apology to its independent retailer members for failing to make payments for sales, and told PG Buzz it “is certainly not the case” that it has gone bust.
However, examination of the records Companies House holds for the business, which changed hands for the third time in two years in April, reveal it filed for voluntary liquidation two months later, appointing insolvency practitioners.
Some retailers do offer greeting cards through Trouva, which takes orders through its website then passes them on for fulfilment to the 419 boutiques and indie retailers listed as sellers, some abroad but mainly in the UK.
Among the sellers are the greeting card and gift group Lark London, and Dartmouth lifestyle store Distinctly Living, who have both now suspended sales through the platform while their owners try to find out what’s going on from Trouva, which bills itself as “the leading platform to discover and shop independent brands and boutiques”.
Giles Halliwell, co-owner of Distinctly Living, told PG Buzz: “We are owed monies from July to date, we suspended sales mid-August being owed near £1,000.
“We had two emails saying they’re chasing funding. We assume they are paying their staff and marketing yet not paying us. I have heard from three or four boutiques that I contacted that they’re all in the same situation. Some, like us, have taken their shops off the site.
“We turned our shop off and cancelled a couple of orders before we shut it. Customers would have been refunded by Trouva.”
Dominic Crowe, who runs Lark London with wife Priya Aurora-Crowe, said they had received an email on Tuesday, 3 September, saying Trouva hopes to pay outstanding money to retailers at the end of September.
“We are hoping that will happen,” he added, “we have stopped taking or sending orders though until they pay us. We have not received any payments in August.”
The Trouva business was incorporated in January 2013, then in 2019 secured £17million in further investment to accelerate internation expansion, before being bought by Made.com in 2022 just five months before that business collapsed.
Trouva wasn’t included in Next’s rescue deal for Made.com and instead went to Re:store, a platform that allows a customer to start a video call with a physical store, at the start of 2023 then, in April, the AI-enabled marketplace for home and living Fy! bought the platform for an undisclosed sum.
Companies House shows Fy!’s accounts are almost a year overdue, although the business is backed by venture capital company Hoxton Ventures.
On 19 June, an extraordinary resolution dated 11 June to wind up Streethub trading as Trouva was filed at Companies House, along with the appointment of insolvency practitioners Matthew Howard and Stuart Morton, of Price Bailey, as liquidators and the registered office address was changed to their Norwich address.
When PG Buzz contacted Trouva on Wednesday, 4 September, a PR firm responded: “We don’t have a further update for media beyond our previous statement which I’m resharing.
“However, on background only, our new funding round is still in progress but is taking longer than we had hoped. We are in touch with boutiques affected and keeping them updated as it all progresses. We will share a further update with media (and of course our Boutique partners) in due course.”
The previous statement, understood to have been issued to retailers selling through the platform, said: “We sincerely apologise for the recent delays in payments to some of our valued boutique partners. We understand the difficulties this may have caused and deeply regret any inconvenience.
“The delays are due to an unforeseen issue while we wait for the completion of an imminent new funding round. This temporary situation has unfortunately affected our ability to maintain our usual payment schedule.
“We are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and resume our normal payment operations as swiftly as possible. We are in continuous communication with the affected boutiques, providing regular updates and offering all possible support during this period.”
