The outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic has generally hit the offline retail of home furnishings globally, but the online market has ushered in a blowout. 

With the gradual development of people's online shopping habits, the future traditional furniture and home furnishing market will inevitably gradually shift from specialty stores and large-scale stores to online platforms. Capital has smelled this opportunity. From the beginning in 2021, two major home furnishing e-commerce financings have kicked off first.

Online mattress platform Resident in the USA raises $130 million in financing

On January 8, Resident Home (hereinafter referred to as Resident), an American mattress and home furnishing platform, announced that the company received a total of US$130 million in financing during the fourth quarter of 2020. The financing was led by Ion Crossover Partners and Nexus Capital Management, and Baron Capital Group also participated in the investment.

Resident is mainly engaged in e-commerce business, and it owns a number of mattress brands and sleep brands, such as Nectar, DreamCloud, Level Sleep and Awara; in addition, it also owns furniture brands Wovenly and Bundle.

The company said that the financing funds obtained this time will help it implement market expansion plans, increase the number of cooperative retail stores, strengthen the construction and management of the supply chain and infrastructure, in order to create a better shopping experience for consumers.

Madeira Amadeira, a South American home furnishing e-commerce firm, received $190 million from SoftBank

Madeiramadeira is the most important online retail platform for home products in South America, even though it has only been founded for 11 years, just like Wayfair in the United States and Pepperfry in India.

According to estimates by Daniel Scandian, founder of MadeiraMadeira, South America before the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, online sales accounted for only 7% of the total sales of the furniture retail industry, but at the peak of the epidemic, this number once jumped to 17%. Taking advantage of the "East Wind of COVID-19", Daniel Scandian is also really proud of the spring breeze.

Daniel Scandian hinted in an interview that the financing obtained from SoftBank this time will be the company's last financing before going public. "The US$190 million will be used to build the company's existing logistics system and storage center. With the support of this funding, the company will launch a 'one-day delivery' service to improve the shopping experience of consumers.