Rob Bridgman spent £2000 on a new sofa, then waited two months for it to arrive after he moved into a new flat in Islington - then the lorry turned up, and he realised the sofa wouldn’t fit through the door.
“I called the company, but they wouldn’t accept returns, so I had it stuck outside my flat until I could get a van to collect it and sell it on.”
Bridgman didn’t have anything comfy to sit on at home for a while, but that hole where a sofa should have been triggered a new business idea: “I questioned the status quo of something that had been the norm for years: that sofas took an average of nine weeks from purchase to delivery, were made the same way, and most didn’t accept returns.”
And so he set up online sofa business Snug, which, the entrepreneur claims, “ripped up the rulebook” with its promise to deliver a sofa within days, “that could fit through any space, be assembled with no tools and with the customer being able to choose their delivery date at point of purchase, with a 100-day trial period.”
Snug first launched in March 2019 — after only two year in business, 2021 turnover was £31 million, with sofa bestsellers including its Rebel and Big Chill models. But progress was slow at first: initially, no factories wanted to take on his brief of modular furniture that would mean the pieces could fit through even small doorways.
“The most challenging part was the engineering and convincing a manufacturer to take us on,” Bridgman, who is 34, explains. “It was nine months working with a furniture technician on the initial designs and concept — that this sofa needed to be self-assembled and be taken apart or put together in a matter of minutes, without the need for tools or DIY skills.”
That first Snug design was rejected by 12 manufacturers before one then accepted an initial order for 100 sofas. “We met a lot of resistance with manufacturers over our ‘no tools’ and ‘speedy delivery’ requirements.” But Bridgman had experience in the industry on his side: he was previously marketing director for his father’s luxury garden furniture business, Bridgman; his grandfather also owned furniture factories from the 1940s onwards.
“I learned all about marketing and e-commerce within furniture and retail during my time at Bridgman — a lot through testing and tweaking, not always getting it right! I was young,” the entrepreneur adds. But it set him in good stead for Snug, where Bridgman sold sofas through Instagram from the start. “Our business model and strategy has been built to be social commerce first.”
That came about through trial and error: Snug sold only one sofa in its first month, and just 10 more in the first quarter. Bridgman had used £15,000 of his savings, taking the same from his father, the other shareholder, to launch, and his 90 unwanted sofas loomed large. But social media helped get them off his hands: “We launched with a social giveaway encouraging sign-ups, then used nano influencers, showing them the product and shooting on location at their homes, so they then shared with their communities. Word of mouth at the beginning was incredibly powerful.”
A year after Snug’s launch, the pandemic set in — which was actually good for the business and its sofas, which cost around £1200 for a three-seater.
“People invested in their homes due to the nature of spending more time indoors,” Bridgman says. “The standard nine-week wait for a traditional sofa simply wasn’t good enough. Instead, home-owners and renters wanted the ease and convenience of having their goods delivered in days.” The firm offered virtual appointments, customer service assistance over the phone and across social channels.
It’s an online business but Bridgman reckons “there is still a large portion of the population that want to venture away from their computer screens and have in-store experiences, which is why we believe there’s still a place for brick-and-mortar stores.” The firm now has eight showrooms across the UK where customers can sit on a Snug sofa before purchasing; Bridgman’s expansion plans include more physical stores around the UK, and he wants to partner with other brands to get his sofas into other High Street retailers.
Bridgman reckons he’s sat on “a couple of hundred sofas to get the comfort right for Snug”, although he’s only managed to squeeze two into the flat with the skinny doorframe that started it all off. “I can’t fit any more than two in,” he laughs, “but I would if I could.”
