Ten-year-old online Melbourne-based garment printer RedBubble is set to list on the ASX in three weeks, with the company’s offer share price of $1.33 giving it a valuation of $267m.
Redbubble was founded in 2006 by three friends; Martin Hosking, Paul Vanzella and Peter Styles. It is essentially an ecommerce hub where designers upload their designs to a website and the public chooses which one they want to be printed on a T-shirts, pillowcase, caps or suchlike. Redbubble prints and then mails globally.
Redbubble is now seeking to raise $30m from an IPO which will release around 10 per cent of the shareholding. It will also receive another $9.8m from investor sell down The valuation of the company from the IPO which is 100 per cent underwritten will be $90m more than IVE, the parent of Blue Star, achieved in December.
Last financial year, the company had a net loss of $6.3m which is expected to treble to an $18m loss in 2016, and then reduce to a $6m loss in 2017. Martin Hosking says the business is still in ‘investment phase’, but says the global nature of the business will be attractive to investors, he says, “We are not constrained by Australia.”
The company has tipped itself to overtake the success of its US rival, Etsy. It already has an office in San Francisco and expects to expand to Germany, France and Spain following its listing.
Hoskings says the business is undergoing rapid growth, with sales in the half year to December up by 55 per cent on the corresponding period last year to $80m, with the company tipping a full year figure of $143m. Customer numbers for FY15 reached 1,440,000. It has proved a boon to designers, spending some $44m on their designs since its launch.
Print industry analysts are pointing to Redbubble as a shining example of print leveraging the best of new technology through an understanding of a particular market to deliver an impressive business model.
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