Connells-backed property sales management proptech shuts up shop
Movewise founder Tom Scarborough blames a basket of troubles experienced by the business including low margins and sales fall throughs, despite high growth.
A property sales service backed by Connells and a senior Zoopla figure which offered busy homeowners and landlords a more effective way to dispose of homes, has shut up shop.
Movewise founder Tom Scarborough (main picture) has revealed via his LinkedIn page that the business has closed, despite having offers on the table to keep it going and strong growth.
He told his followers that this cash and momentum wasn’t enough to carry on, blaming the closure in part on the frustrations many agents also face – that revenues from its service were only realised when a property sold.
Movewise was launched in 2018 as a ‘tech-enabled’ sales management service that worked with agents, raising £3 million in seed funding from several of the UK’s top tech angels, growing to employ 14 people and annual revenues of £1 million.
…the stop is sudden and a shock to everyone.”
But Scarborough reveals that, “when a business has been funded by investors and that investment is no longer forthcoming, the stop is sudden and a shock to everyone”, he says.
“We had an offer of funding but it was smaller than we needed in quantum, totally dilutive to non-participating shareholders and my expectation is that that investment of money and further time would ultimately have been lost too.”
Scarborough has also given several reasons why his business has closed, citing sales fall-throughs, low ‘revenue quality’ and narrow margins particularly when selling landlord stock, much of which came via a deal with the NRLA.
But the founder says this funnel of business couldn’t be expanded and that the only other option was to spend heavily on marketing to gain homeowner and landlord clients, something the business wasn’t able to finance via investor funds.
Strong growth
Despite the problems, Scarborough says Movewise was enjoying strong growth but not enough to attract investor cash in large enough sums.
“The only thing worse than stopping now is being forced to stop in six months’ or three years’ time,” he adds.
“It’s sad we had to stop. We all lost. Thank you to our customers, team members, investors and suppliers.
“You all believed in us and whilst I believe we succeed in building better way to sell property, we didn’t succeed in making that sustainable long term.”
Read the announcement in full.
