Marketing company Brandspace searching for a buyer

Brandspace Group, one of the UK's leading pop-up marketing companies, is set to collapse into administration if a buyer is not found soon.

The company sets up temporary, mobile retail stalls and demonstration areas at busy locations including airports, shopping centres and even X Factor queues. Although it possessed some big-name clients like Samsung and Peugeot, Brandspace has been hit by some tough competition in the 'experiential marketing' sector, notably from ID Experiential and Space And People. The most recent blow is thought to have been the loss of several large shopping centre contracts.

Brandspace Group has failed to get its 2012 accounts in on time to Companies House, with the latest figures to 31/3/2011 showing a £2.3m pre-tax loss on sales of £6.5m.

Brandspace has been around for about twelve years, though it has been through a rebranding following a merger with Promotion Space Group in 2008. The several elements of the company, which were brought together by Octopus Ventures, possibly didn't gel too well together - in particular a poster media division that Chief Executive Paul Soanes expressed some concern about in 2011. The idea was to cross-sell the clients of the poster business promotional space services.

"The strategy has previously been to buy and build but we’ve struggled to integrate the different businesses and get that synergy," Soanes said at the time.

Octopus is understood to have written off its £1m investment in Brandspace as early as last year.

We have not yet been able to confirm a rumour that Moore Stephens has been preparing to take over as administrators of the business. This may not happen if the company is sold soon, though certain parties have been made aware of the opportunity for some time. It is hoped that parts of the business may be hived off to competitors, serial entrepreneurs or competitors in the coming weeks.

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