St Pancras based Sourced Market Stands Over £750,000 via crowdfunding
CrowdBnk, has announced that funds raised to date for Sourced Market, a farmer’s market style retailer based at St Pancras station, have surpassed £750,000 and demand for investment remains high.
The project, which is CrowdBnk’s largest equity raise to date, was boosted this week by a single investment of £325k, taking the SME over its original £700,000 funding target. The campaign was launched in late 2013. Due to continued high levels of interest, the project will remain open until the planned close date of 14 March and will now take investment up to a total of £1 million. The capital will go towards the opening of a second site as well as the refit of the original St Pancras site and additional money over the original target will accelerate their expansion plans.
Ayan Mitra, CEO of CrowdBnk, commented:
“Sourced Market is an amazing example of the power of crowdfunding and the opportunities available for all suitable investors to become involved in backing quality UK businesses. Although the company has a successful five year trading history and expected revenues of £2.6m this financial year, Sourced Market was turned down for funding from a number of banks before approaching CrowdBnk as an alternative way to raise money.
“Crowdfunding fills the SME funding gap by providing strong businesses with access to a broad range of investors. CrowdBnk’s approach of allowing the ‘crowd’ to invest alongside professional investors has proved particularly successful with Sourced Market, with over 100 investors participating in the project to date.”
Ben O’Brien, CEO of Sourced Market, added,
“We have seen an amazing response for the fund-raising to date and it is a fantastic result for our business. The investment is critical to the growth of our business and the fact that we are seeing demand for investment beyond our original target means that we will be able to accelerate the pace of our expansion. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve this via traditional funding routes and I hope our experience encourages other SMEs to consider crowdfunding as a viable alternative source of finance.”
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