The company behind the Chupi luxury jewellery brand lost more than €1.9 million in 2023 as the business shed jobs and grappled with a decline in sales.
New accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office for Blazenvale Ltd, where Dublin businesswoman Chupi Sweetman and her husband Brian Durney are listed as directors, reveal accumulated losses at the trading entity had widened to more than €2.8 million at the end of December 2023, after it lost close to €1.3 million in 2022 and €1.96 million last year.
Ms Sweetman, who has been approached for comment, characterised the 2022 losses as “planned” when she spoke to The Irish Times earlier this year. She said the company made a number of “very significant investments” in marketing and branding that year.
Both the 2022 and 2023 accounts are unaudited and abridged, meaning they do not provide any specific information about revenues or sales.
It is understood, however, that while Chupi – which opened a flagship store on Dublin’s Clarendon Street in late 2022 – was expanding and rebranding, the leadership team had communicated to staff that the business had underperformed on its forecasts with a double-digit decline in online sales dragging on headline revenues.
Staff numbers at Blazenvale declined from 54 in 2022 to 49 at the end of last year, according to the new filings. Consequently, staff wages and salary costs declined from almost €2.2 million in 2022 to just under €1.7 million in the year.
In a note attached to the 2023 filings, the directors said the accounts had been prepared on the basis the company is a “going concern”. They said: “The directors have reviewed the financial position of the company, looking at current levels of funding and income, and expected results for the foreseeable future covering the period to, at least November 30th, 2024. And if it decreases, they may have to look at reduced levels of activities, in the short term, going forward.”
The Irish Times reported in January that a number of jobs had been lost or were under threat at Chupi.
At the time, the company had temporarily laid off about nine workers in the early weeks of 2024 and was engaging with them in a consultation process over the future of the roles.
Those lay-offs followed two earlier rounds of redundancies, the first of which began in October 2022.
The second round began in July 2023, around six months after the business secured a €3.75 million equity and debt investment from BVP, Abbey International Finance and Permanent TSB to fuel its ambitious growth plans for Ireland and the UK.
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