Goldman Sachs leads £25m round for Worldstores

Previous backers, including Balderton Capital, Advent Venture Partners and Serena Capital, took part in the funding round.

Balderton first invested in WorldStores in 2009. Balderton and Advent Ventures then injected £8.5m into the company in 2011 – WorldStores' management team retained a majority shareholding at the time. Serena Capital joined Balderton and Advent Venture for a £10m series-C round in 2013.

This latest funding round will finance the creation of an in-house fulfilment fleet, as well as the development of the company's Casafina membership platform. More generally, Worldstores will look to further develop its technology and products range.

Company
Worldstores is an online retailer headquartered in Twickenham selling homeware and furniture via its four main brands: Worldstores.co.uk; Casafina.com; modern.co.uk; and Kiddicare.co.uk, which was acquired from turnaround firm Endless in October last year.

Worldstores was established in 2008 and generates annual run-rate revenues of more than £100m. It employs 350 people.

People
Andrew Wolff worked on the deal for Goldman Sachs.

Advisers
Equity – OC&C Strategy Consultants, Alex Birch (Commercial due diligence).

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• Topics
• UK / Ireland
• Expansion
• Consumer
• United Kingdom
• Goldman Sachs
• Balderton Capital
• Serena Capital