Online retailer BoozeBud has collapsed into administration this week, with the business no longer accepting orders.
Michael Brereton and Sean Wengel of William Buck were appointed as Voluntary Administrators by the director of BoozeBud Holdings Ltd and the director of Pocko Pty Ltd (trading as BoozeBud), as of Tuesday 2 May.
Brereton said the Administrators are undertaking an urgent assessment of the businesses’ financial position and exploring a sale of the business and assets or the recapitalisation by way of a Deed of Company Arrangement.
“We have made the difficult decision that the company has insufficient funds to continue operating,” Brereton said.
As such, all future online orders have been stopped on the BoozeBud portal, and all staff have been laid off, effective immediately.
Brereton also said the majority of the BoozeBud Board of Directors had resigned over the course of the past few months, but “interestingly, the sole director of BoozeBud Holdings Ltd was only appointed as a director of the Company on Wednesday 26 April 2023. The remaining directors then resigned on 27 April 2023. Further inquiries are being made in this regard.”
A first meeting of creditors will be held on 9 May 2023, with the future of the company to then be decided by creditors at the second meeting.
It has been a tumultuous decade for BoozeBud since it was founded in 2014 as ‘BeerBud’ by Alex Gale, Andy Williamson and Mark Woollcott. In 2015, it expanded its focus and changed its name to BoozeBud, before being bought in 2018 by ZX Ventures, the global venture capital arm of AB InBev, which owned Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) at the time. After CUB was acquired by Asahi Beverages, BoozeBud was sold back to the founders in 2020.
There was a rumoured IPO on the horizon for BoozeBud in 2021, which did not eventuate, with the company then acquiring fellow online retailer Get Wines Direct in 2022.