Red Letter Days Sold

[peterjhale]

Adventure and experience gift firm Red Letter Days (RLD) has been placed in administration, it has been confirmed.
The firm, run by Dragon's Den judge Rachel Elnaugh went into administration on Monday after building up large debts and some suppliers withdrew services.

And it's been sold to fellow Dragons Den Judge Peter Jones !!!!!

From RLD website:

We are able to confirm that even though the administrators (Primary contact: Andrew Pepper at Kroll Limited) have been appointed, entrepreneurs Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis have been working tirelessly all weekend and late last night to find ways of completing a rescue package for Red Letter Days Limited.

We are now happy to confirm that Jones and Paphitis have purchased the assets and goodwill of the Company. This is great news for customers and the Red Letter Days brand and means that the business has a future. This announcement is great news also for the company’s 150-plus employees.

With immediate effect, we will now focus on getting the business back to normal, following a long period of uncertainty. We have already committed to honour all Red Letter Days experiences that have been purchased directly from the Company through Visa and Mastercard.

We have provided this critical financial support since we hope that people will continue to buy Red Letter Days experiences from today onwards through our website (www.redletterdays.co.uk) safe in the knowledge that they will all be honoured.

Discussions over the next few days will take place with all suppliers in order that direct working relationships can be re-established, so that individuals with current vouchers can rebook and enjoy the experiences they have purchased.

We have also managed to secure the position of a substantial number of our voucher holding customers and will be working hard over the coming days with our retail partners to put in place a package of measures that will endeavour to ensure all voucher holders that purchased through retail outlets will be able to enjoy their experiences.

We have been hugely encouraged by the support we have received from the company’s suppliers over the past few days. Even despite the fact they are unlikely to receive any monies from the Administrator, a significant majority have expressed in letters, emails and telephone calls that they want to support the business going forward now that it is under new ownership.

We envisage that very soon it will be business as usual. We would like to thank all our customers and staff for the support and patience they have shown. The Red Letter Days brand is now able to continue and we are both extremely confident that the Company has an exciting long-term future.

[MikeH]

My initial thoughts were to remind myself of the following-

When spending over £100 (i.e £100.01 upwards) always pay by Credit (not debit) card. The first thing that this company has done is struck a deal with Mastercard and Visa to sort out those people first. The reason - they are both jointly and individualy liable for the debts.

So whether buying a fridge or a ferrari experience, buy it with a credit card as you can pursue both parties for the cash.

Mike.

[inbakumar]

In the case of RLD, it was interesting to note that the founder Rachel Elnaugh who couldn't manage her own company (ran out of money) was playing the role of a Judge in the famous BBC show Dragon's Den where she was deciding the fate of budding entrepreneurs. I wonder how BBC selected Rachel Elnaugh and others as judges in the first place.

I never liked the BBC show as I found the qualities of the judges somewhat suspect and didn’t like the way they treated most of the people who were seeking funding for their ideas. There was no need to humiliate people on national television. It takes great guts and self-belief to present your idea to a national television audience for which they need to applauded and encouraged. What other members of the forum think of the show?.

Regards,

[bordeaux]

i liked dragons den, however i did think that only two of the judges where worthy of a seat on the panel.....peter jones and doug richard (the yank), the rest had merely got lucky with one idea. it became evident when they had to give reasons for not backing a certain idea, those two were the only ones who gave valid reasons....but yeah rachel was by far the worst, woman just arent good business people..too emotionally involved...with the odd exception obviously

[MikeH]

woman just arent good business people..too emotionally involved...with the odd exception obviously

What a ridiculous and unqualified statement. I hope that no female members of this forum even respond to such a statement.