UK’s leading Market Place for home design fits in Burda’s cross-media strategy

Burda Cross Media today (02.09.2008) announced it’s investing in By Design Limited UK with a minority stake. By Design owns the number one marketplace for homedesign in the UK, mydeco (http://mydeco.com/). The investment amount and details were not disclosed.

mydeco brings together more than one and half million products from over 640 retailers in one place. Easy-to-use 3D room-planning tools help you to see how real products will look in your room and buy with confidence. Since beta launch in the UK in February 2008 the site has attracted over 1.5m visitors and became already the number one Home Design Portal in the UK after the first month. The Company is owned by a visionary group of investors, led by Tom Teichman of SPARK Ventures.

The investment strengthens Hubert Burda Media’s leading position in the market for living & food and fits into the cross-media strategy of the media company: Vertical markets according to fields of interest will be created, in which the Burda brands will be bundled and marketed together with partner brands. Initially, these vertical markets will be created in the high-consumption categories of People & Style, Living and Food, in which Hubert Burda Media is strongest. The Living vertical market comes next with 7.4 million page impressions and a market share of 34 percent (source: IVW, May 2008) in Germany and mydeco fits in perfectly.

"mydeco shows the future of online magazines, the way how online tools change the way how people shop for their homes. With the investment in mydeco we are further expanding on one of our core markets and gaining access to the online market worldwide," says Dr. Marcel Reichart, Managing Director of Burda Research and Development. At the moment mydeco and Burda are checking options for further international expansion.

background information:

mydeco was conceived and founded in 2007 by the management team behind lastminute.com, one of Europe’s most successful ever online businesses. mydeco’s highly functional website, beta-launched in the UK in February 2008, has won huge public acclaim for its blend of search aggregation, interactive planning and visualisation tools and social networking capability. The business has signed partnerships with top retailers such as Heal’s, John Lewis and Lombok, while leading figures in the design world including Sir Terence Conran and Philippe Starck have joined the company’s Design Board. mydeco is the trading name of By Design (UK) Limited.

Burda Cross Media develops digital media formats and carries out market and media research. In cooperation with internal and external partners, the division organizes innovation projects and networking events such as the international conference Digital Life Design (DLD). Recent R&D projects include the in-house development of BurdaStyle, HalloHund and LesMads. Current Investments are Sevenload, Scienceblogs, and Glam Media.The managing directors are Dr. Marcel Reichart and Stephanie Czerny.

Send an email | Print