Valuation to reach £1 billion! Made.com is about to IPO and strive for home furnishing unicorn status

Foreign media reported that British online furniture and homewares retailer Made.com announced its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) in London , with some investors selling shares in the hope that the upcoming initial public offering (IPO) will raise funds for the company and bring its first valuation to 1 billion pounds.

The company said it plans to sell about 100 million pounds ($142 million) of new shares, while existing shareholders will also sell some of their shares.

Last month, Made.com set up a holding company chaired by co-founder Li Ning and former John Lewis executive Susanne Given.

Made.com will follow the debuts of other e-commerce brands such as Virgin Wines , card maker Moonpig and Music Magpie, which floated on London’s AIM junior market last month. All online businesses are seeing sales accelerate due to the pandemic, while Virgin and Moonpig’s shares remain well above their IPO prices.

“Every shopping experience begins and ends online. The store is part of the digital experience, not the beginning or the end,” Made.com chief executive Philippe Chainieux told the Financial Times, referring to the company’s limited number of showrooms. Made.com has also vowed to stick to a vertically integrated model rather than wholesale or licensing.

“We are vertically integrated, there is nobody between us and the factory, between us and the consumer,” Chainieux added. “The last 12 months has been an inflection point,” he said of the growth of the company’s business over the last year. “We now have a much broader customer base both geographically and demographically.”

The company is seeking to capitalise on its opportunities amid the pandemic by expanding its logistics network with a new distribution centre in Essex, which will separate products for European markets from those imported into the UK, deliberately avoiding post- Brexit tariffs .

Made.com, which was founded in 2010 and operates in eight countries across Europe, achieved sales of £212m in the year to December 2019, up 22% on the previous year.

The company is currently targeting total annual sales of more than £1.2 billion ($1.7 billion) by the end of 2025 .

Made.com

U.K.

IPO