Sofa.com Shakes Up A 'Turgid' Industry As It Eyes Sale

The founders of home furnishings website Sofa.com are certainly not taking things easy.

The company has appointed advisers as it considers a refinancing or sale of the business to raise cash for expansion.

Founders Rohan Blacker and Pat Reeves earlier this month called in financial advisory firm Altium to explore options for the seven year-old business to help fund expansion.

Blacker, who previously set up food delivery firm Deliverance with Rohan, which was sold for £5.5 million in 2004 to Active Private Equity, told City AM: 'I think we are a very exciting proposition for the right people.'

The company filed accounts several weeks ago showing that turnover increased 35 per cent to £17.6 million in the year to February 28. Pretax profit rose from £985,320 to £1.6 million, the documents show.

He said since the year ending February sales have 'continued to march forward in very much the right direction.'

'We span ecommerce and traditional retail quite nicely with £21 million-odd sales from one relatively small off pitch showroom [in Chelsea] and a profitable online business that continues to grow,' he said.

It also has a showroom in New York and a franchise business in Holland.

He told the Mail on Sunday today: 'The UK sofa sector is worth about £3 billion a year. When we launched in 2005 the industry was turgid, customers had to wait weeks, sometimes months, for their sofa to arrive, and there was no right to return or heavy penalties for doing so.'

The pair set up the Deliverance meal ordering service around London a decade ago but Blacker said: 'Deliverance was really complicated logistically. We employed more than 200 people, many foreign, so there were visa issues, and every day we were feeding 1,500 people in a two-hour period. We were also managing hundreds of suppliers. We loved it, but learned what we didn't want in our next business.’

He said the business, which relies on other firms to manufacture their furniture, has a turnover of more than £20 million and is growing by 'between 20 per cent and 50 per cent' per year.