Sofa.com

Sofa.com is a UK-based company founded in 2006 whose primary business is selling sofas, sofabeds, chairs and beds online. It has showrooms in Chelsea, London (Chelsea Wharf, Lots Road), Bath, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Amsterdam, and Holland.

History

Sofa.com was founded by Pat Reeves and Rohan Blacker when they paid $215,000^[1] for the domain name sofa.com. It was agreed that Pat Reeves would buy the domain in cash and would meet the seller in New York to complete the transaction. On the day Reeves refused to pay cash and informed the seller he would only pay via wire transfer. The seller reluctantly agreed, and provided bank details, purportedly of the company he was employed by. In fact, the bank details were his own and $200,000 were transferred into his account in November 2005. He absconded to South America with the $200,000 and a stripper. The money ran out ten months later^[2] charged with theft greater than $10,000^[3] and he was sentenced to one year in prison. Rohan Blacker and Pat Reeves met when studying law in London in the early 1990s.^[4] They went on to found a business called ‘Deliverance’ in 1997, a high-end hot food delivery business, operating from three kitchens in central London. By 2004 deliverance had sales of £7m and made up to 1,500 deliveries per night on 80 motorcycles. Deliverance appeared at position 37 in the Sunday Times Fast Track in 2004. Deliverance was sold in 2004 for £5.5m to Active Private Equity, Gavyn Davies’s^[5] (ex chief economist at Goldman Sachs') private equity fund.^[6]

Rohan Blacker and Pat Reeves sought a new business venture that required fewer staff, fewer physical premises and a product with a higher basket value, and a long shelf life.^[7] At the time most UK sofa companies did not consider it possible to sell furniture via the internet. Companies like DFS concentrated on physical stores and have amassed a chain of 85 stores as of 2012.^[8] Blacker and Reeves believed that furniture could be sold online with a promise of completely free returns if the customer, for whatever reason, rejected the goods.^[9] Branded by Perry Haydn Taylor's design agency, big fish,^[10] Sofa.com was launched in September 2006. Unlike the majority of the furniture industry it never holds sales, preferring to sell high quality furniture, with excellent service, at a great value price all year round.^[11] Sofa.com has appeared twice in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the UK, first in 2011^[12] and again in 2012.^[13] Sofa.com sales grew from £572,000 in 2007 to £13.0m in the year ending February 2012. In February 2015, CBPE Capital acquired a majority stake in the business.

Products

Sofas are sofa.com’s primary product. They are designed in house and come in over 50 different styles ranging from traditional to more contemporary pieces. They are produced in their own factory and upholstered in a large range of fabrics bought directly from mills^[14] in Italy and Belgium. House fabrics consist of linen, cotton, velvet^[15] and corduroy. Sofa.com also sell sofabeds, chairs and footstools and in 2009 introduced a range of upholstered beds. Most of the sofas are constructed so that the arms are detachable or they split in two, to facilitate easier delivery to the customer.^[16] Sofa.com runs its own delivery team with vans that use the strapline ‘Sofa.com: I wonder what they do?’^[17] and offsets its carbon output through the agency Forest Carbon^[18] by planting trees at a plot in Aberdeenshire. On Sunday May 13, 2007 Marek Turowski broke the Fastest Furniture Land Speed Record by driving the sofa.com high speed sofa at 92 mph, witnessed by a representative of The Guinness Book of World Records.^[19] Mr Turowski paid £1376 on eBay^[20] for the right to drive the motorised sofa, which was donated to charity ‘The Foundation for the study of Infant Deaths (FSID)’.^[21]

Philanthropy

Sofa.com made charitable donations of £175,000 in 2011, and £252,000 in 2012 (year ending February). Sofa.com supports Help for Heroes and the children's charity WellChild,^[22] donating nearly £30,000 to the two charities in 2012. In 2011 sofa.com donated $120,000 to Afghan Connection to build a school in the Worsaj Valley region, Afghanistan. The school was completed in summer 2012 and now educates 1,000 pupils.

Design Initiatives

In 2010 sofa.com launched its Design Lab^[23] initiative, supporting and working with British designers, artists and textile designers. The first collaboration was with St Jude’s, based in Norfolk and run by Simon and Angie Lewin. The second collaboration, with Thornback & Peel, launched in Autumn 2012 and includes a range of armchairs, beds and ottomans in exclusive colourways of Thornback & Peel's most popular fabrics, Jelly & Cake and Rabbit & Cabbage.

In 2012 sofa.com also launched a nationwide Emerging Designers^[24] competition to uncover Britain’s most exciting up-and-coming designers.

References