Sugru sells to Tesa for £7.6M and crowdfunding investors lose up to 90%

FormFormForm makes Sugru, a mouldable glue that works as a flexible adhesive repair putty curing into durable silicone rubber, founded in 2004 by Irish inventor Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh with James Carrigan and Roger Ashby.

That crowdfunding could fund both the business and the awareness challenge for a new consumer material; it broke when debt financing was pulled.

£3.4M crowdfunding (2015), £1.6M second round (2017), a £4M CYBG debt facility of which the £1.5M second tranche was pulled, plus traditional investors including Medra Capital, Antipodean Ventures and LocalGlobe.

Inventor Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh developed the mouldable glue and co-founded the company in 2004; Sugru's cult following earned it a spot on Time's 2010 top-50 inventions list and a community of users online.

Sugru recorded double-digit sales growth for years, including a 20% year-on-year increase in December, and launched through bricks-and-mortar retailers like Target in the US. But driving awareness through retail proved harder and slower than expected. The company cut staff in two rounds in 2016, moved assembly to Mexico to improve margins, launched a 'family safe' formulation for children eight and up, and entered South Africa, France, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The launches drove sales spikes but the necessary ongoing levels proved hard to sustain. In November 2017 CYBG pulled back the £1.5M second tranche of its £4M debt facility — 'It left us very exposed,' Ní Dhulchaointigh said — and by early 2018 several of the largest shareholders, along with the bank, worked to facilitate a sale.

German adhesives specialist Tesa made a formal offer in March 2018; accepted by 51% of shareholders, valuing shares at 9 pence — about £7.6M for the company — with investors losing up to 90% of their initial investment. The sale completed the week after the report, with staff and Ní Dhulchaointigh expected to stay on.

The failure is not of the product but of the funding stack: 9p shares against a beloved brand with 20% growth shows how fast a pulled debt tranche reprices everything.

Crowdfunding doubled as a marketing thesis, and the company's own note admits neither the targets nor the scale of the awareness challenge were understood.

The sale preserves the thing customers care about — staff and the inventor stay on under an adhesives specialist — while almost wiping out the crowd who funded it.

It is a rare post-mortem where the numbers on both sides are public: £3.4M and £1.6M crowds in, £7.6M out, 51% shareholder acceptance.

Crowdfunding capital arrives without institutional follow-on discipline: when the growth story slips there is no structured second cheque, and one pulled bank tranche forces a firesale.

The Tesa sale completed in the week after the 17 May 2018 report, with Sugru staff and Ní Dhulchaointigh expected to stay with the company. The material reports no later developments.