Photo: Cozey
Cozey is releasing its first sectional and L-shaped sofas.
A Montreal-based furniture start-up has raised $2 million from private investors to expand its team and build out its infrastructure to support its strong growth.
Cozey has managed to thrive amidst a global pandemic, growing by 1200% in its first year of operations that began in early June 2020. With simplicity, personalization, value, and care as its four pillars, the capital raise will also allow the e-commerce company to develop and release new products to become a complete home furniture retailer with the same modular and customer-focused approach currently seen in its first sofa-in-a-box.
In charge of the capital raise was Cozey's new Chief Financial & Operating Officer, Dominic Létourneau, who has more than 20 years of experience working in the financial industry and was most recently Operating Partner at the CDPQ before joining Cozey.
How Cozey started
In 2019, Frédéric Aubé, then a 23-year-old student at McGill University, decided he had had enough of helping friends move their enormous sofas up and down tight stairways in small Montreal apartments. He could not wrap his mind around this common problem that many Canadians face each year and realized there was room for creating an alternative to bulky and expensive couches. Why not offer something better and simpler, at the same time?
After 18 months of product development, Aubé found a solution: a sofa that would come in multiple boxes to fit through any door. Not only this, but it would only be available online, the assembly would be tool-free, and the product would be elegantly designed with high-quality materials at an attractive price.
Giving back
In his mission to simplify Canadians' lives, Aubé also found it essential to help people who need comfort the most. Care and proximity with the community are values that motivated Cozey's founder and CEO to push for inclusion and offer parcels of comfort through the Comfort Box initiative. "If we want to offer comfort to every Canadian, we have to start with the ones that need it most." Partnering with Mission Old Brewery in Montreal, a Cozey Comfort Box containing hygiene products and warm clothing is donated to a person in need for every sofa sold.
