Press release: mydeco launches

MYDECO.COM LAUNCHES

THE TEAM BEHIND LASTMINUTE.COM ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF ITS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED NEW INTERIOR DESIGN SITE

The creators of lastminute.com today launched mydeco (www.mydeco.com), the new website that will transform the way we shop for our homes, just as lastminute.com transformed the travel industry.

With a unique combination of inspiration, the latest technology and the widest range of home retailers in the UK, mydeco makes it easy and enjoyable to design and shop for our homes online.

For the first time ever, mydeco brings together more than a million products from over 500 retailers in one place - from high end and high street favourites such as The Conran Shop and Marks &Spencer, to small niche manufacturers - making it simple to find what you’re looking for without trawling the high street. Easy-to-use room planning tools help you to design a room in 3D, decorate it using paints, wallpaper, flooring and textiles, and furnish it with over 20,000 3D models of real products available to buy on the website – giving you a photo-realistic view of how your room will look, and enabling you to buy with confidence.

Founder and executive chairman Brent Hoberman says: "mydeco helps you get more out of your home. The site empowers consumers by giving them unrivalled choice, design advice and unique room-planning tools.

We, as a nation, spend about £14bn a year furnishing our homes – yet until now, the internet hasn’t been used to brings it all together and make the customer’s shopping experience easier and more enjoyable. mydeco gives you everything you need to shop wisely, stylishly and confidently."

mydeco will offer products from more than 500 retailers including: Heals, Argos, John Lewis, The Conran Shop, Furniture Village, Graham and Green, The White Company, Andrew Martin and Lombok.

David Kelly, CEO, mydeco said: “Our research shows that in the US, already one in ten furniture purchases are made online. The same will happen in the UK. We know that consumers want to buy their furniture and home accessories online, but no previous site has enabled them to with such ease, choice and style.”

    The site’s advantages include:

  • A smarter way to shop
  • The widest range of home products in the UK, over 1 million products in one place online
  • Design tools to create 3D rooms, and see how real products will look in your own room
  • Tools to upload photos of rooms allowing you to add to existing interiors or try new colour schemes
  • Over 1,000 inspirational room ‘looks’ to choose from, which can be tailored to your budget
  • Advice and style from leading designers such as Sir Terence Conran
  • An online community so users can swap ideas, or even see each others’ rooms

mydeco attracted a successful group of investors, following one of the largest internet seed rounds in Europe, led by Tom Teichman of SPARK Ventures. In addition to Teichman, other investors include the Rothschild family, Marc Worth, founder of Worth Global Style Network, Edward Atkin, founder of Canon Avent and Yoo Ltd, the property branding, design & investment company lead by John Hitchcox and Philippe Starck.

OPTIONAL: mydeco is also the first public site to enable non-design professionals to make money from their interior creations, allowing users with creative flair to design a room and receive a commission from retailers for items bought from their design.

Notes to editors

The mydeco management team includes:


Brent Hoberman – Founder and Executive Chairman

David Kelly – Chief Executive Officer

Paul Chudleigh – Chief Technology Officer

Pia Munden – Design Manager

Martha Lane-Fox – Non-Executive Director

Tom Teichman – Non-Executive Director

John Hitchcox – Non-Executive Director

    Other mydeco investors include:

  • Edward Atkin
  • Marc Worth
  • Peter Dubens
  • SPARK Ventures
  • Jez San
  • Thomas Hoegh
  • Yoo Ltd
  • Lord Rothschild
  • Zennstrom/Skype
  • Marc Samwer
  • Christiane zu Salm

Design tools:

The revolutionary free visualisation tools on the site offer a unique opportunity to visualise designs in 2D and 3D.

  • Decorate my photo enables customers to see the effects of changing colour schemes, wallpaper,flooring and fabrics within photos of their own interiors, and all without having to raise a paint brush.


  • Furnish my photo also works with the customer’s own photograph to allow the user to quickly add new furniture to their own room. Furniture can be rotated and moved in perspective.


  • 3D Complete Room Planner allows customers to re-create entire rooms in 3D. Customers can build, decorate, furnish, and finally view a room in 3D. mydeco users can draw their own floor plans from scratch, choose from pre-defined room shapes or trace over a floor plan they already own.
    Customers can then apply colours, wallpaper and flooring, and choose from 20,000 3D models of real furniture to decorate their space. Finally, users can view rooms from varying vantage points and see them rendered in high quality3D.

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