Made.com Design Ltd

Made.com Design Ltd, a London-based e-commerce company which designs and sells furniture and home accessories online, entered administration on 3 November 2022. Rachael Wilkinson, Zeif Hussain and Peter Dickens of PwC were appointed Joint Administrators.

The Joint Administrators have now delivered their Proposals, outlining the reasons for the company’s administration and their plans going forward.

Like many retailers, in particular those selling ‘big-ticket’ products, the company was heavily impacted by the significant decline in consumer spending from cost of living pressures, rising import costs and continuing supply chain pressures.

The directors explored numerous options to try and turn the business around, including seeking new investment and refinancing options, and a sale of the business through a formal sales process. However, all interested parties withdrew their solvent offers and the company had insufficient cash reserves to continue trading. Therefore insolvent offers were explored with a deadline set of 1 November 2022.

Immediately following their appointment, the Joint Administrators completed a sale of the company’s brand, intellectual property, domain names and database to fashion retailer Next for total consideration of £3.4m (plus VAT).

The deal did not include staff. At the time the company went into administration, it employed 573 permanent employees. In order to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies, 87 employees who had previously resigned and were working their notice were advised that they were not required to work the remainder of their notice period. The total number of redundancies in the UK were 314.

In addition to retaining 20 head office employees to assist with the administration process, the UK warehouse, which employs 58 people, will continue to operate.

Auction house John Pye is running the auction of more than 1,000 truckloads’ worth of stock. The auctions will be held several days a week in the run up to Christmas and well into the New Year. A significant portion of the available stock may be subject to liens, which may impact the recoverability of some of the residual stock.

At this time, the Joint Administrators anticipate that secured creditors, preferential creditors (primarily employees with redundancy claims) and HMRC will be paid in full.

They also anticipate that there will be a Prescribed Part dividend of about 0.3p in the£ for unsecured creditors, plus a dividend of between 0.6p and 1.6p in the £ for unsecured creditors prior to the costs of realisation and the administration.

Solicitors from Herbert Smith Freehills are assisting the Joint Administrators.

The Administrator’s Proposals can be found HERE.