CROYDON Village Outlet is set to go bust and owes at least £500,000 to creditors, the Advertiser understands.
The troubled store, at the former Allders site in North End – hailed as "the Harrods of the South-East" when it opened last September – was set to be served with a statutory demand by a commercial debt collector as the Advertiser went to press yesterday (Thursday).
The debt collector, Outstanding Results, is representing five unnamed creditors who are owed about half a million pounds by store directors Marco Cash and Joanne Morrison.
Martin Brand, director of Outstanding Results, said he believes there are many more creditors owed and the final figure could total more than £1.5 million.
The company are also pursuing the pair for personal guarantees they have provided.
Mr Brand said: "One company came to us asking for our help and since then we have had a number of other businesses get in touch for help.
"It is a large amount of money but it's not necessarily about the amount of money, it's the arrogance with which Mr Cash has treated others and the publicity he seeks.
"He and his business partners have treated these small businesses very shoddily and for a small business to invest in something and to come out tens of thousands of pounds down is not good at all. That can put people out of business for good."
A statutory demand would give Mr Cash and Ms Morrison 21 days to settle their debts or reach an agreement for their payments.
If there is no agreement, whoever issues the statutory demand can start bankruptcy proceedings or issue a winding up order.
Mr Brand said trying to get in touch with Mr Cash had proved very difficult in recent months as the company attempted to recoup its creditors' money.
"He avoids any phone calls and is very selective in who he picks up to," said Mr Brand.
"To start off he was very keen to talk to us to explain there were no financial problems but as time has gone on he has been more difficult to get hold of than Osama Bin Laden, and he's been dead a few years."
A source at the store said the current owners have "vanished" in the last week.
Mr Cash made a series of bold and brash claims when he opened the store last year.
However, the venture has been marred by problems since a shambolic opening day in September where customers were evacuated from it just a few hours after opening.
Since then, a number of staff at the troubled store have been in touch to complain about allegedly not being paid properly or on time.
Staff threatened a walk-out if they were not paid in time for Christmas, although Mr Cash denied this and the walk-out never happened.
A sales assistant, who left for a new job last week, contacted the Advertiser on Monday to say he was owed £900.
He also said morale among staff was "worse than ever" and that they had been told by one manager he was worried how they would pay their wages.
Mr Cash, the public face of the store, is said to have taken a back seat in its day-to-day management and has had little recent interact with staff.
When Mr Cash and his company Metro Outlet Limited arrived in Croydon in a blaze of self-publicity and fanfare last year, the new store was flooded with applications for jobs.
Mr Cash dismissed claims his company would be forced out of the old building when Westfield arrived to begin work on its £1 billion regeneration of the town centre. He told the Australian retail giants they could build around him and promised to flash his "a**e" on the hall of the town steps if the redevelopment happened on time, currently earmarked for 2017-18.
However, the customer numbers quickly dried up and, according to members of staff at the store, the only times it has been busy were on the opening day and before Christmas.
Matt Sims, chief executive of the Croydon Business Improvement District (BID), said: "We have always been hopeful that its trading position would improve over time.
"Though there are mixed opinions on what the store offered the retail environment in Croydon, we cannot take away the fact that it bought life to a large vacant unit while we await the larger regeneration of the town centre."
The Advertiser has made multiple attempts to contact Mr Cash in the last few months but has received no response.
