Three friends who wanted to invent a bouncier mattress for sex have launched their start-up on the stock market in a £140 million flotation.
The online mattress firm Eve Sleep, founded by Jas Bagniewski, his cousin Kuba Wieczorek and friend James Fryer, raised £35m, despite never having made a profit.
The company made £12m in revenue last year, attracting shoppers by offering free delivery, and free pick-up and return within 100 days if customers didn’t like the mattress.
Eve Sleep had already won funding from star investor Neil Woodford, and now plans to plough the new funds, raised by Peel Hunt, into winning fans both overseas and in the UK.
undefinedBagniewski, 35, who previously helped run Groupon in the UK, said: "Other mattresses get quite hot because they mould to your body shape. You sink into them, which means they’re not great for sex.
"We have developed a foam that is bouncier and cooler, which makes it nicer to sleep on."
He added: "We had this idea of waking up the sleeping industry. We wanted to disrupt an industry which wasn’t very consumer friendly. Mattresses aren’t a product people talk about with much excitement. We felt we could do better."