The greetings card chain was set up by Clinton Lewin after the demise of Clintons, his family gift card firm, with the aim of carving out a niche with iCandy's innovative range of gifts across shops in the south-east.

The administrators reported that after a period of rapid store expansion since its formation in 2012, resulting by the end of 2016 in 14 stores, and a prolonged period of strong overall headline revenue growth, pressure on cash-flow had since the new year become unsustainable.

This was due to a combination of underperformance in some of the smaller stores across smaller south-east regional high streets where consumer spending has more recently been reined in, and often sharp rises in local business rates with no let-up in rental levels. Latest reported revenues for the financial year to 31 July 2016 were £4.165m.

After investing considerable amounts of his own personal savings into iCandy to underpin growth, Lewin was finally left with no viable alternative to ensure the continuation of on-going trading across iCandy's core store portfolio and website, other than to seek the protection of administration while a more sustainable solution can be found.

The joint administrators say they are already engaging with a number of parties interested in some or all of the business and they will continue to trade iCandy while evaluating approaches.

Immediately upon their appointment they have had to close four stores across Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Essex and make 22 redundancies, a mix of full and part-time staff, in order to ensure on-going trading at the remaining 10 stores which supports the employment of the balance of 79 full and part-time staff.

Glyn Mummery, joint administrator and partner at FRP Advisory, said: ‘iCandy has been a bold move for its founders who made a real success of braving regional high street from its inception at the end of 2012 - just when many retailers had given up the ghost in the wake of the financial crisis -  right up until late last year.’