Furniture marketplace Swoon Editions has announced a £4m Series A funding round from Octopus and Index Ventures.
The London-based company, whose team has grown from three to 36 in twelve months, will use the investment to grow their community and increase the number of designs on their platform.
Swoon Editions will also create 20 new roles in the company. The majority will be based in London but they will also have new staff in Vietnam, India and China.
The investment follows a £1.2m seed round in May 2013.
Cutting costs
The company, which was founded in March 2012, is a marketplace (with a twist) for high-end furniture.
It functions in a very similar way to Made.com who cut out the middle men and function without warehouses to bring you furniture at a lower cost.
The difference with Swoon Editions is that they gauge interest in products before putting them into production.
Not your usual marketplace
It previews a limited edition design every day to its online community and those that draw high demand then make it through to ‘Full Editions’.
A shipping container’s worth of the product is ordered and it is put on sale towards the latter stages of production so that it can be delivered straight to customers when it arrives in the UK.
By comparison, Made.com combines all the orders for a piece every 7 days and then puts that exact number into production.
Brian Harrison, CEO and cofounder explains:
We believe people should be able to own beautiful furniture without paying six times what it costs to make.
We cut out unnecessary retail overheads and gain further efficiencies by only producing pieces we know are in demand.
We believe people should be able to own beautiful furniture without paying six times what it costs to make.