Made.com, the online furniture retailer, today fired the starting gun on its stock market flotation declaring it sold £315 million of stock last year, meaning it was growing at 30% a year.
The group founded by Lastminute.com tycoon Brent Hoberman and Ning Li is expected to be valued at around £1 billion when the pricing is announced soon.
Of the original founders, only Li is still a director but Hoberman, Chloe Macintosh and Julien Callede, also co-founders, are expected to share in a major payday.
Made is run by CEO Philippe Chainieux, who today issued financial performance data on the group for the first time ahead of the IPO which has been keenly anticipated.
The group works with independent designers to create new ranges to sell on its international website. Unlike other e-commerce platforms, it commissions new ranges and manufactures the products the 150 external designers come up with.
Chainieux, who has spent a career in e-commerce, formerly at Match.com, told the Evening Standard: “This is the right time for us to accelerate our development. Going public in London is right for us to fulfill the ambitions of our business.”
He added: “The shift online in our market is accelerating. We feel [furniture] is at an inflexion point, the same as fashion was 10 years ago.”
Made was one of the Covid winners, as people sought to spruce up their homes during lockdown. The most significant shift Made saw, Chainieux said, was that demand on the continent spread to more rural areas outside of its traditionally strong towns and cities.
Chainieux is aiming to raise £100 million of new money in the IPO to invest in additional marketing to boost its operations on the continent, improve the customer experience and offer more products, particularly in decoration and homewares, which it launched into four years ago.
In the last year, the group made a gross margin of more than 53% and made underlying profits in the first quarter of the year.
The group said it was profitable in its key markets of the UK, France and Germany.
Revenues for Made on the goods it sells were £110 million last year, up 63% year-on-year.
The group was founded in 2010 and sells furniture and homewares in eight countries on its e-commerce platform.
JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Liberum are working on the float.
