The first part of this article attempted to tackle the timeline of events that led to Propeller’s collapse into liquidation.
This ranged from suppliers (and occasionally, staff) beginning to go unpaid from mid-to-late 2023 onwards, the freezing of its warehouse account by London City Bond, and two failed deals aimed at saving the company in late 2023 and early 2024.
However, while it could be argued that Propeller failed due to unfortunate circumstances, Decanter‘s research would suggest that the reasons for the company’s collapse were evident right from the start.
An established pattern
One former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, worked on a freelance basis for Propeller between 2021-2022. We refer to them here as ‘Sam’.
Sam recalled that Propeller founder Jamie Wynne-Griffiths ‘presents really well, and knows how to rattle off a sales spiel’.
‘However, when it came to working with him, I quickly realised he’s totally disorganised, scatterbrained, and has no semblance of planning things. There was no direction, he’s here, there and everywhere with ideas.’
From Sam’s recollections, the business appears to have had serious issues from as early as late 2021. For example, Sam was not paid in October or November of that year.
Wynne-Griffiths was then caught driving under the influence that December, and was later sentenced to a 28 month driving ban.
The two invoices were eventually paid but both they and the drink-driving incident ‘should’ve been more of a red flag than it was’, Sam said.
By May of 2022 Sam’s unease was at its height. ‘I said I didn’t like the cash flow issues even though sales were coming in and out of the business,’ they said.
‘He [Wynne-Griffiths] said not to worry and I was going to get a raise. But then I invoiced him for May and he couldn’t pay it. Then he didn’t pay for June or July. Then he went on holiday for three weeks to Greece.’
Unpaid work
During this time, Sam was left to shoulder the complaints from suppliers who were also going unpaid. It is also alleged that, around this time, the company accountant approached Sam and said that Wynne-Griffiths was using company money to pay for personal expenses such as work on his house.
A series of text exchanges dating from late August show Wynne-Griffiths making a litany of excuses and promises around the late payments.
Wynne-Griffiths reiterated that all was going to get better. There was the invoice financing that ‘will change our cashflow overnight’, the inheritance from the sale of his late mother’s house, a Crowdcube campaign ‘at £90K’, ‘about £10K of new monthly retainers’, a ‘motherload of cash due this week’ from suppliers and ‘the new invoice cycle for Sept’.
‘Please don’t think I’m taking advantage of you,’ he said.
Trust erosion
By 3 October – now five months in arrears – promises and excuses were on-going. The invoice financing had yielded just £16,000 not a hoped-for £50,000. Wynne-Griffiths admitted he was ‘on stop with LCB’ over unpaid duty (proof that this had happened before the meltdown in 2023).
He said there was ‘£100K of committed funding’ from a Crowdcube campaign – though the only evidence Decanter has found of a campaign dates to 7 October 2022 and shows a little under £11,000 raised – as well as a ‘trade finance facility for £100K’ and £75K of inheritance.
Seven days later (10 October), Wynne-Griffiths was pressed again when the money owed would be forthcoming, with Sam threatening to file a claim if they were not paid.
He responded: ‘Jesus, why does it need to descend into this kind of aggression? There are no spare funds, account is overdrawn, and payroll has not been completed, nor have expenses. Although you had perfectly good reason to, bear in mind that you’ve left me and Jo [the accountant] to cover everything, not least the crowdfunding campaign.’
Sam replied: ‘I am done with excuses. I…
Source : https://www.decanter.com.master.public.keystone-prod-eks-euw1.futureplc.engineering/wine-news/tailspin-holding-propeller-to-account-537690/
