E-commerce mattress firm eve Sleep goes public two years after launch

eve Sleep, the e-commerce mattress company ranked at 10 in last year’s Startups 100 index, has announced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) with a market cap of £140m.

Launched in February 2015 by Young Guns Jas Bagniewski, Felix Lobkowicz and James Fryer, and Kuba Wieczorek, eve Sleep develops and delivers a range of affordable memory foam mattresses, offering its customers a 100 day sleep trial. It has since branched out into everything from pillows to sheets and duvets.

This is thought to be the first retail IPO of 2017, with a conditional placing of 34,587,411 shares of 0.1 pence each at 101 pence per share. On admission, the company will have 138,349,644 ordinary shares in issue.

Having conditionally raised £35m before expenses, the Startups Awards-nominated company is planning to invest heavily in advertising and marketing and to bolster its growth strategy.

With an estimated £20bn bedroom and bath market across Europe and a £5bn mattress market, eve will look to increase its penetration across the continent, extend its bedroom range and grow partnerships in core markets.

In October last year, the firm closed a £13.9m Series B to fuel its global ambitions, led by Octopus – one of its earliest backers – alongside DN Capital and Woodford Investment Management.

In what’s being dubbed the “battle of the beds”, eve has had to face competition from a number of other contenders in the space including SIMBA, Luku and US rival Casper.

Bagniewski commented:  “Today marks a new dawn in our vision to be Europe’s leading sleep brand. With our simplified direct to consumer proposition, we are disrupting a fragmented European market, which is forecast to be worth approximately £26bn by 2019.

“eve has a clear growth strategy, an experienced management team and a scalable operational model to continue building on its momentum. We thank our existing investors for their continued support and welcome our new shareholders. We look forward to the future with real confidence and delivering long term value for all stakeholders.”  

Luke Hakes, investment director at Octopus Ventures, said: “Congratulations to the team at eve Sleep on its AIM floatation – and for their hard work and commitment to have achieved such phenomenal growth in just two years.

“When we first backed eve back in May 2015, and twice again since, we knew the team were unusually talented entrepreneurs who would dare to go big and create change, and that’s exactly what they have done – including marking the first retail IPO of 2017!”