Simba Sleep, a luxury mattress manufacturer, has secured £2.5 million additional investment and accomplished extraordinary sales of £2 million in just three months. Backed by heavyweight investors including Nigel Wray, Chairman and major shareholder of The Saracens rugby club and former non-executive of Domino’s Pizza Group Plc, the additional investment will support Simba’s flourishing growth and overseas expansion.
Founded by former corporate financier James Cox and mattress industry experts Andrew and Harry McClements, Simba has high ambitions. Forecast to achieve £20 million annual revenue run rate in just six months, Simba will launch in Europe over the next three months and aims to penetrate Asia and the United States by the end of the year. Simba’s rapid growth and disruption in the mattress market is set to continue, with its other investors including Tom Teichman of SPARK Venture Management, who will act as chairman and led this successful round of funding. Teichman has a long track record in supporting some of Europe’s most successful startups, including Lastminute.com and Moshi Monsters. Sir John Hegarty, advertising executive and a founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Smoothies, who has also joined as a brand advisor – Simba has the investment, skills and ability to continue on this upward journey.
Commenting on Simba’s rapid growth, Hegarty states, “The fragmented, noisy and confused mattress market presents a great opportunity to create a global sleep brand, leveraging the ground-breaking next generation sleep technology the team have created”.
The mattress market is vastly underappreciated; however with over 140 mattress manufacturing businesses producing revenues of over £680 million, the market is buoyant allowing room for innovative businesses to break the mould.Adding to this burgeoning market, Simba is the first new innovation in the sector since the introduction of memory foam in 1966. Simba uniquely combines a high pocket-spring count with the support of memory foam and cool comfort of its own trademarked latex – and which can be compacted and rolled up for ease of delivery and installation. In fact, the mattress is delivered, compressed, rolled and folded into an easy to manage box for easy manoeuvre up the narrowest of staircases – unique for a pocket spring product. Although rolled mattresses already exist, this is a first for a premium, conical pocket-spring product and as a result is aiming to soon become the market lead.
“We spend approximately 25 years of our lives in bed, yet this need is massively underserviced – compared with, say, the kitchen which is considered the centre of the home,” says CEO James Cox. “Since we started trading three months ago, we’ve achieved incredible success we never thought possible. The cash injection will allow us to continue growing at this momentous rate providing more people with a good night’s sleep, while exceeding all our targets. We’re really thrilled to receive confidence from such influential business experts who have the knowledge to support fast-growth start-ups such as Simba. We aim to be disruptive within the sector through continued innovation to ensure a global sleep brand is created.”
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