Valuation of intellectual property and sale of assets for the pre-pack administration of a leading hair and beauty web site and management of 86 retention of title claims

Williams and Partners were instructed to value the IPR and stock for a pre-pack administration. The IPR consisted of a leading internet based hair and beauty website, various related domain names, a database of 1 million customers and a number of trademarks. The stock, the vast majority of which was high end, high value product supplied by multi-national companies and which did not form part of the sale, consisted of approximately £750,000 of hair and beauty product at cost but subject to extensive retention of title (RoT) claims from 86 separate manufacturers.

Our valuation was used as the basis of the sale of all the IPR to a willing third party buyer for a sum in excess of £300,000.

Williams and Partners were subsequently instructed to manage the RoT and subsequent sale of stock. Claims were received from 86 suppliers totalling in excess of £525,000.00.

19 claims were accepted and 67 denied on the basis of either an invalid RoT clause or lack of proof of incorporation of the RoT into the contract between the parties.

Of the 67 suppliers whose RoT claims were denied, 9 purchased their stock back for between 50% and 75% of cost.

After the return of stock to successful RoT claimants and the sale of own stock to brand owners, a total of  over £400,000 of stock was offered for sale with a minimum threshold of 25% of cost value to 3rd party buyers and was eventually sold at 34% of cost value.

Furthermore, to save costs to the Administration, Williams and Partners required the successful buyer to pay a Buyer’s Premium of 10% over and above the purchase price and did not charge a seller’s commission to the administration.

With the stock initially valued at £40,000 due to the number of potential RoT claims, a total of just under £148,000 was realised on the sale of stock alone.

As Williams and Partners were based on Site for the 8 week duration of the instruction, we were able to successfully sell all items within the inventory including racking, cardboard gift boxes, computers, desk, chairs and phone system.