Online Furniture Retailer – We are in the middle of converting a wholesale fashion brand into an online furniture retailer. We are applying fashion marketing know how to the furniture market and taking advantage of consumers increased trust in buying larger items direct and online.
Our company has traditionally been a clothing brand selling leatherwear to retailers internationally. Following a decline in sales from £10m to under £4m over a few years the team decided that the way forward was a total change to becoming an online furniture retailer.
We developed 3 main strands of products, iconic, traditional and outdoor. Sales are now circa £600k per month after one year.
We are still selling clothing and this has consolidated.
We plan to divest ourselves of this business to concentrate on furniture.
Convenience and value.
We have a unique marketing approach which means that we are very specific with our marketing spend and offer customers a solution to a furniture issue that they were unaware that they had.
We aim to earn a 60-65% gross margin.
Delivery costs c20%, marketing costs 20%, leaving approx. 20% to cover overheads and profit.
Our aim is to drive up conversion and repeat sales which will give us a greater budget for prospecting.
The key to a successful exit strategy to either a trade buyer who would be a furniture retailer or an online seller not currently in interiors or an investment business is to drive growth hard so that the price is a multiple of revenue rather than a multiple of EBITDA