Furniture Boom in online trading: Westwing-founder on the crisis, purchases of the German

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“The Zero Hour”
Furniture Boom in online trading: Westwing-founder on the crisis, purchases of the German

The Corona-crisis has many losers, but there are also winners such as the Online furniture retailer Westwing. CEO Stefan Smalla told in the Podcast, how his company has coped with the onslaught in the Shutdown and what he expects for the future.

There are a surprising winner of the Corona-crisis: the Online furniture trade. To 25 percent of the business grew in April and may, the Germans sat at home and made it a cosy and beautiful. And still the sales are on the rise. One of the profiteers of the online retailer Westwing from the Startup forge Rocket Internet, the offers with its shopping clubs, furniture, decoration and living accessories. “The Boom has surprised me, everything else would be presumptuous,” says Stefan Smalla, the Co-founder and CEO of Westwing in the Podcast “The Zero hour”. “Overall, many customers have tried for the first Time E-Commerce for products from the field of Home & Living, and after all, what we can see, remain here.”

The shift to E-Commerce was not sustainable. “This will not certainly go so crazy as in the second quarter,” says Westwing-in-chief. It has, however, been a “Baseline Shift”. In the second “Shutdown”-quarter sales of Westwing were exploded by 91 percent, literally, these growth rates have flattened, but still the business is booming. “In all the countries and markets we sell significantly more,” said Smalla.

For the entire year of 2020, Smalla, whose Co-founder Delia Lachance in March in a “baby break”, expected sales are between 370 and 400 million euros from 267 million euros in 2019. That would be an increase of 40 percent to 50 percent. The result, expected Smalla, should be after a loss in 2019 at 20 to 30 million euros. The good business is also reflected in the share price, the share is almost at the 20-Euro mark, having in the meantime fallen to 1.80 euros.

Westwing had to employ staff to cope with the onslaught. The Online shopping club for furniture and home accessories from the realm of Rocket Internet was founded in 2011 and offers every day a new, curated selection of products, 90 percent of the customers are women.

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