After more than two years running the Winans Long/Short Fund, WI Mutual Funds LLC [see profile] is pulling the plug on the product. Novato, California-based WI Mutual Funds plans to shutter the fund on or about December 23 [SEC filing]

The fund carries a one-star rating from Morningstar and has $7.5 million of AUM.

WI Mutual Funds started took over management of the fund from the Biltmore Group in August 2009. The fund previously known as Northern Lights Biltmore Momentum Dynamic ETF Fund. It launched January 2008.

Ken Winans, president and founder of WI Mutual Funds and Winans International, said in an interview with The MFWire.com that his firm decided to exit the mutual fund business partly because of the amount of administrative workload that comes with being in the fund business. Winans said he will concentrate on the higher-margin SMA business.

"We're happy with Gemini Fund Services," Winans said, referring to the fund's vendor. "It's just that the amount of paper flow and basic things you have to do to run a '40 Act fund are larger than we had anticipated."

He also encountered challenges marketing the fund. "We found marketing of the fund to be more difficult than our standard SMA business," he said.

Going forward, Winans said he would be open to doing sub-advisory work for mutual funds. As for running his own fund, "we would probably never go down that path again," he said.

For those contemplating getting into the mutual fund business, Winans has this piece of advice: "Get ready for a lot of paper and e-mails." 

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