Egmont acquires Nordic design and home furnishings e-commerce leader Royal Design Group AB

The Egmont group will now considerably deepen its position in the Nordic e-commerce market with the purchase of Royal Design Group AB private equity firms Verdane and eEquity. The transaction constitutes a substantial investment for the Egmont division Egmont Publishing, which started investing in e-commerce about seven years ago. Including the investment in Royal Design Group AB, Egmont Publishing today has a portfolio of eight rapidly growing e-commerce companies with an aggregated 2020 turnover of closer to DKK 5 billion.  

Royal Design Group AB holds a leading market position within home and interior products in the Nordics and select European markets, and expects to reach a turnover of almost SEK 1 billion in 2020. The Group operates the brands RoyalDesign and Rum21. Over the past couple of years, the company has invested substantially in building scalable systems and infrastructure to create a platform for continued growth. Examples include investments in improved delivery times through an automated warehouse, launched in 2020.

”We have been following RoyalDesign’s growth journey with interest over the past several years. It has been our intention to expand our position in the home and interiors e-commerce category, an area where Egmont Publishing has a lot of experience of helping our suppliers build strong brands by combining visual inspiration and shopping into qualitative customer experiences for consumers. As such, RoyalDesign is a perfect fit our portfolio. We look forward to supporting RoyalDesign’s continued development and growth through our long-term and active ownership,” says Torsten Bjerre Rasmussen, CEO of Egmont Publishing.

Egmont Publishing will acquire all existing shares and assume full ownership of Royal Design Group AB. Harald Ennen, incumbent Chairman of the Board, will remain with the company. Ennen has a well-established presence within the Egmont sphere as the CEO of Egmont-owned OutNordic, the e-commerce company operating the brands OutNorth and Fjellsport.

Royal Design Group AB’s head office is located in Stockholm, with its warehouse situated in Nybro close to the Swedish city of Kalmar. The company has 120 employees, led by CEO Magnus Pettersson. Private equity firms Verdane, which has been majority owner since 2017, and eEquity, co-owner since 2012, now hand over the ownership responsibility to Egmont. To ensure a smooth transition, Verdane Principal Daniel Ahlstrand will remain as member of the board through 2021.

”We at Verdane are proud of our productive collaboration with the team at Royal Design Group and eEquity, where we have been able to harness Verdane’s experiences from over 30 previous e-commerce investments. Together, we have gone from SEK 150 million to almost SEK 1 billion in turnover, established Royal Design Group as Sweden’s undisputed #1 online vendor in the premium home and interiors category and created a leading position on the remaining Nordic markets with a clear growth plan outside the Nordics. We are pleased to pass the baton to the Egmont team, which has successfully continued the development of a number of former Verdane companies,” says Daniel Ahlstrand, Principal, Verdane.”

Magnus Wiberg, Managing Partner at eEquity, says: ““We invested in RoyalDesign in December 2012 as the first institutional investor,when the company had SEK 95 million in revenues. Now, the company has revenues of almost SEK 1 billion with nice profitability. We have been very active in the investment and have played a key role in acquiring the furniture arm Rum21, built a fantastic management team, and been involved in two major projects that have played an important part in the increased profitability: a top-notch e-commerce platform and a state-of-the-art automated warehouse."

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval by the Swedish and Norwegian competition authorities. The parties have agreed not to disclose the terms of the transaction.

For further details, please contact

Jesper Eising

Head of Press, Egmont

+45 29603019

jesper.eising@egmont.com

Daniel Ahlstrand

Principal, Verdane

+46 70 538 35 05 daniel.ahlstrand@verdane.com

Magnus Wiberg

Managing Partner, eEquity

+46 735 375 000

magnus@eequity.se

About Egmont Publishing

Egmont Publishing is a market-leading publisher with a large range of home and interior magazines in the Nordic countries. Beside a portfolio of e-commerce companies, Egmont Publishing also owns a series of agencies in the Nordic countries, e.g., KAN and Ingager in Sweden, S360 in Denmark, and Sempro in Norway. Egmont Publishing is a part of the Nordic media group Egmont that creates strong content within movies, television, streaming, computer games, education, magazines, and books. Egmont is behind companies such as Nordisk Film, TV 2 in Norway, and Egmont Books. Egmont is a foundation, and the profit goes to development of the media company and support of children and young people.

About Verdane

Verdane is a specialist growth equity investment firm that partners with ambitious Northern European tech-enabled businesses to help them reach the next stage of international growth. Verdane pioneered portfolio acquisitions in Northern Europe in 2003, and announced a complementary fund strategy entirely dedicated to direct investments in 2018. Verdane’s eight funds hold €2.1bn in total commitments and have made over 120 investments into category leaders in digital consumer, energy & resource efficiency and software businesses. Verdane’s team of 62, based in Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Oslo and Stockholm, is dedicated to being the preferred growth partner to tech-enabled businesses in Northern Europe. www.verdane.com

About eEquity 3

Founded in 2010, eEquity is a private equity firm investing in Nordic digital growth companies. Portfolio companies include, among others, Pricerunner, Footway, NA-KD, iDeal of Sweden, Aim’n, Preglife, and TwistShake. eEquity invests in growth companies benefiting from online and digital conversion, being led by strong entrepreneurs with the potential of becoming clear market leaders. The investors behind eEquity consist of leading European family offices and international financial institutions. For more information www.eequity.se

About Royal Design Group AB Royal Design Group is the leading e-commerce actor of the Nordic countries within design, furniture, home, and interior – with the ambition to offer the world’s best brands for your home at the right price and to be the preferred choice of the consumers. Since the establishment in 1999, where the company focused on e-commerce with Swedish high-end brands for the American market, it has grown remarkably. Today, the company is represented online in 14 different geographical markets under the brands RoyalDesign and Rum21.