Made.com shares close lower after £775m placement

Shares in Made.com, the online furniture retailer, ended almost 4% lower on its first day of trading on the London Stock Exchange.

The firm had priced its initial public offering at 200p per share, valuing it at up to £775.3m.

But shares tumbled by up to 8% before ending the day at 186p per share.

Made.com, which was launched in 2011 with £2.5m in funding, was co-founded by Ning Li and Brent Hoberman, best-known for starting Lastminute.com

The firm said money raised from the float will allow it to "accelerate" growth.

While Made.com has seven showrooms - two in the UK and five elsewhere in Europe - it is focussed on online sales.

In the first three months of this year, about 52% of its sales were in the UK market with the remainder coming from Europe.

It plans to use the money it raises from the flotation to expand its business further across Europe, although it is not planning any more physical showrooms.

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Made.com chief executive Philippe Chainieux said: "A listing in London, where the business was founded, will enable us to accelerate our growth as we lead the development of the online furniture and homewares market as it moves online, both in the UK and internationally."

Made.com will raise £100m of new money as a result of 50 million new shares being issued. Existing shareholders will sell a further £93.8m worth of shares.

'Digitally native'

Although Brent Hoberman is no longer actively involved in the running of the company, he is still a shareholder, as is Ning Li, who was chief executive until the end of 2016 and is now a non-executive director.

Made.com began as a joint venture between Ning Li and mydeco.com - an online furniture and interior design site set up by Brent Hoberman and head of design Chloe Macintosh.

Ms Macintosh also co-founded Made.com and became its creative director, leaving in 2015.

Entrepreneur, Julien Callède, was the fourth co-founder of Made.com, who has also left the business.

The idea arose when Ning Li discovered he could not find a good quality, affordable sofas for his own home.

Covid boost

He came up with the idea of sourcing directly from designers and manufacturers and selling their furniture on the Made.com website, targeting a tech-savvy millennial audience. The company calls them 'digitally native customers".

The firm now employs about 600 staff, all of whom have been given £10,000 in share options.

The firm's sales have been boosted over the course of the Covid pandemic as more people, confined to home during lockdowns, have shopped online and bought more furniture and other homewares.

Sales hit £315m in 2020, a year-on-year rise of 30%, and in the first three months of this year they grew by 63% to £110m.

Made,com joins a series of online retailers to have floated recently, including earlier this year, greetings card firm Moonpig, wine company Virgin Wines and Deliveroo.