It’s been confirmed that women’s lifestyle magazine, The Pool, which was co-founded by Lauren Laverne, has gone into administration.
As reported earlier this week, The Pool, hadn’t paid wages to staff for January and management were in talks to save the company.
Lauren Laverne and co-founder, former Cosmo UK editor, Sam Baker set up the website in 2015. They both left the business last year, along with most of the board.
Baker said:
“Heartbroken this morning. We tried so hard and we failed. What matters now is getting the brilliant team and freelancers paid. If you’re hiring I know some bloody excellent people. Not a single one past or present I wouldn’t give a glowing reference.”
Laverne wrote on Twitter:
“I haven’t had an official role at @thepooluk for a while, but I co-founded it and I am extremely sad to hear about its closure. However I am also very proud of what we achieved. It was an honour to work alongside such an inspiring and creative team, on something people loved.”
Staff were only told of the closure yesterday.
In a series of Tweets, the recently appointed editor, Cate Savilla wrote:
“I don’t really know what to say. I’m absolutely gutted. This has been an extremely frustrating situation, and I’m heartbroken and fucked off. For my team. For our freelancers. For our readers. I always wanted to work at The Pool, and I can’t quite believe what’s happened.
“We’ve had so many kind messages from contributors and readers. Thank you for those. We’ve also been accused of knowing this would happen and commissioning people anyway – this is untrue and we didn’t. “But you’re the editor! You should have known!” I didn’t know. I wish I had.
“We don’t quite know what happens next, we only found out about going into administration this evening, but we will try to keep everyone involved updated. We’re doing our best in this crappy situation. Thanks again for being kind. (I never want to write a thread like this again.)”
The company lost £1.8m in the previous financial year and owed £760,000 to creditors in March 2018.
