The online women’s magazine The Pool, which was co-founded by Lauren Laverne, is fighting for its future, with staff yet to receive their wages for January and management in talks to save the company.
The company has stopped commissioning freelancers following a backlog of complaints that bills had gone unpaid, while staff say this month’s salaries, which were due last Friday, have yet to arrive.
Dominic Hill, The Pool’s only remaining director, said it was “not over yet” but “donations would be greatly appreciated”, adding a winky face emoji in a text message.
Laverne, who was recently appointed as BBC Radio 6 Music’s breakfast show host, co-founded the website in 2015 with the former Cosmopolitan editor Sam Baker, but the pair left the business last year, along with most of the rest of the board.
The website’s financial troubles come at a trying time for the internet publishing industry, after BuzzFeed and the HuffPost owner, Verizon Media Group, announced major layoffs amid questions over the future of ad-supported online media.
The Pool’s recently appointed editor, Cate Sevilla, said: “I can’t comment on the fate of the company; as of right now, I’ve still not received confirmation of any possible outcomes.
“I’m deeply concerned about not only the payments to our freelancers, but that of the entire staff, who have sustained months of change and uncertainty, particularly in the last few weeks.
“I can only trust that both matters and any other outstanding issues will be resolved promptly and with integrity.”
Accounts filed in December for The Pool state there are “uncertainties which may cast doubt over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”, emphasising it is reliant on the continued willingness of investors to subsidise losses.
The company lost £1.8m in the previous financial year and owed £760,000 to creditors in March 2018. Laverne’s personal service company has an outstanding loan of £40,000 to The Pool, with other investors lending a further £250,000 against the company’s assets.
The Pool raised at least £4.2m from shareholders in the first three years of its existence but continues to run at a heavy loss. Its most recent accounts state it employs 24 people.
Most of the board resigned in August, leaving Hill as the only remaining director. He has limited involvement in the media industry and his other recent business interests include a directorship of a takeaway food company.
His other major company is Pink Parcel, which bills itself as the “UK’s No 1 period subscription box” and delivers boxes to women containing femcare and beauty products, although this has also recently been in financial difficulties.
In a recent blogpost, Hill described how Pink Parcel’s former parent company collapsed at the end of 2018 after a major investor pulled out, forcing him to lay off staff. “By the end of October, the company was fast running out of cash, and things internally were in a chaotic state; staff were upset, subscribers were upset, my wife was upset and I’m pretty sure that at this point my kids were upset too,” he said.
“In order to try and preserve the business, we had to backtrack on our plans, and sadly I had to start making people redundant, but it was too late; the cracks were too big.”
Hill insisted he has since managed to save the business after putting in his own money, although some customers found they missed their period box delivery.
