“What brought us here is not what will take us forward,” said Robson Privado, sales and marketing VP of the Brazilian e-commerce MadeiraMadeira during an interview with LABS. Although without revealing further details, the co-founder promised some good news for 2020, and the first one of them has just been announced: the e-commerce platform of household articles will launch its own brand, focused on the smart furniture concept, according to Brazilian media outlet Exame.
MadeiraMadeira’s operation, that mixes products of their own and a marketplace with an offer of more than 1 million products, will use the recent investment led by Softbank to support the new project. With a $110 million funding announced in September, the round was also backed by Light Street Capital and Flybridge Capital Partners.
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“What we have been doing this year and it will be one of the big investments next year is helping our suppliers develop products that are specific to e-commerce,” said Privado back in the interview in December. The new brand, precisely, through the smart furniture concept, will aim at building these specific products: practical, ergonomic, powered by technological advances, and allowing consumers to assemble the products by themselves – without needing professional help.
Heading the new project will be the former Managing Director at Ikea, the Spanish Santiago Antoranz, who is currently the Head of Procurement at MadeiraMadeira. With almost 800 employees, 200 of which are in the technology and product development areas, the startup has been “actively looking at new talents around the world” to drive the company forward.
