LN-CC grew too fast for its cash flow — administration in year four

LN-CC — Late Night Chameleon Café — was co-founded in 2010 by John Skelton and Daniel Mitchell as a highly curated, appointment-only personal shopping enclave in Dalston, east London: part boutique, part installation, blending fashion, music and art. It became London's original experimental retailer, and the growth was immediate. Skelton later described it as 'explosive growth from the first year, really over the last three years' — double-digit expansion that the company's finances could not follow.

The diagnosis was the founder's own. 'With double-digit growth, it kind of got to a point where cash flow was becoming so tight that it was becoming impossible to get the product in on time,' Skelton said. 'We never really nailed the actual business side of our offer.' By September 2013, Drapers reported the retailer was awaiting a £4 million investment and unable to pay a number of its stockists. In February 2014, LN-CC fell into administration; Milan-based The Level Group bought the business, reformed it as a new legal entity, and kept Skelton on as creative director.

The store survived its founders' business plan by becoming someone else's. Under The Level Group, LN-CC grew into a cult online destination; when the physical store closed in March 2020 with the first lockdown, it sat empty for four years until March 2024, when The Level Group chief executive Cristian Musardo reopened it on Shacklewell Lane — part-boutique, part-creative agency, something different from the appointment-only enclave it began as.