The intellectual assets of Paul Simon, one of the UK's best-known furniture and home furnishing names, are being put up for sale following the 50-store chain's collapse into administration earlier this year.
Metis Partners, an internationally-operating intellectual property (IP) specialist, has been called in to co-ordinate the global marketing of the IP assets of the south of England-based company.
Metis Partners is working on the instruction of the joint administrators Lee Manning and Nicholas Edwards of Deloitte LLP who were appointed in April after the company hit cashflow problems exacerbated by winter floods in the South-west, where it had a strong presence.
Paul Simon, established in 1990, is an award-winning brand which has been associated with furniture and home furnishings in the UK for more than 20 years. At the height of its trading, the company had more than 550 employees. It established a strong reputation for value, offering curtain tracks, poles and accessories, beds, sofas and furniture, carpets and a massive range of ready-made curtains, samples and made-to-measure blinds.
Nat Baldwin of Metis Partners, who is organising the global marketing drive, says: "Paul Simon is a very well-recognised and uniquely valuable name. We anticipate strong interest from professionals involved in furniture, homeware, home furnishings, DIY, haberdashery, textiles and brand acquisition.
"As well as having a significant high street presence in cities such as Bristol, Reading, and Luton, the Paul Simon also had an e-commerce feature on its website and offered a delivery service to online consumers. This presence, both online and through their numerous stores, saw the brand become a household name in the UK."
Intellectual Property assets in the Paul Simon sale include a broad range of valuable domain names, goodwill in the brand and reputation and the e-commerce website content. The joint administrators have set a deadline for offers of mid-July 2014.
Association with the sale process will further enhance Metis Partner’s reputation regarding sales in the furnishing and homeware sectors. It has completed widely publicised and successful sales of the IP assets of household names such as Allders, Ortak, Land of Leather, Johnson & Johnson and MFI.
