James Middleton, Kate Middleton’s younger brother, sells Boomf.com
James Middleton has sold Boomf.com to a consortium of investors
Boomf, a personalised greetings company, founded by Kate Middleton’s younger brother, James Middleton, has been acquired by a consortium of investors, led by the founder of Galaev & Grierson venture capital firm, Stepan Galaev, and the founder of the global photography company Splento, Roman Grigoriev.
Boomf started in 2013 selling personalised marshmallows. In 2017 Sophie Dummer, former Commercial Director at MoonPig, joined the company as CEO and within a short period of time Boomf launched an innovative range of new products, such as the Boomf Bomb, the Boomf Cannon, the Boomf Flutter Card, the Boomf Wild Card and the Ta-Dah Card - personalised, photo based greetings cards which explode in a shower of confetti.
These exploding cards immediately became widely popular on social media and the company went viral with customer generated videos, increasing Boomf’s Instagram and Facebook following to an industry record-breaking 500k followers per account and firmly establishing Boomf as the new energetic and innovative player in the greetings card market.
Following a strong 2019, Boomf moved into new offices in Reading with circa 20,000 square feet of warehouse space and in 2020 posted in excess of one million pounds profit in 2020 and Boomf continued to innovate within the gift and greeting card markets, launching curated gift boxes in 2020 and flowers in 2021.
These two new product areas, which also explode with confetti, were received extremely well – particularly on new platforms such as Tiktok where customers continue to share their delighted reactions to Boomf’s inspirational gifting with the extra magic and surprise of a confetti explosion. Boomf’s stream of innovation continued in summer 2021 with the launch of personalised greeting cards designed by freelance creators.
However, a huge increase in customer acquisition costs caused by the iOS14.5 update and Covid-19 after-shocks took its toll on the company and 2021 proved more challenging. Sophie Dummer, Boomf’s outgoing CEO, commented:
“In the last year, as experienced by many e-commerce businesses, the cost to market on social channels has risen beyond all expectations. As a niche personalised brand, it has become difficult for Boomf to survive as a standalone business in this increasingly competitive environment. Our priority has been to protect our team and secure the future of our brand and we are delighted about successfully completing the sale of the business, so Boomf can continue to surprise customers all over the world.”
As a result, a group of investors led by two Estonian entrepreneurs, Stepan Galaev and Roman Grigoriev, acquired Boomf with a view to grow the company into the world’s leading player in the card-attached gifting business.
They have big plans.
2021 may have been a challenging year for the company and industry as a whole, but their future plans look set to more than make up for it. The global market for greetings cards is worth over $20 billion and for card attached gifting over $25 billion (£18.5 billion) in the UK alone, meaning there is plenty of scope for growth.
With the younger generations making up the larger share of the market, Boomf’s unique perspective of fun and trending gifts and cards is set to appeal directly to them.
Roman Grigoriev, Founder and CEO of Splento, and Boomf’s new CEO, couldn’t be more enthused and positive about the company’s future. He comments:
“I personally send more than 50 cards each year and have long been an admirer of the way Boomf brings joy and surprise to people’s lives. We are delighted to have this opportunity to bring the two brands together. Splento works in 49 countries, helping people capture the big moments in life. Boomf helps them celebrate and share these moments – so there is a natural synergy in what the two companies do.
Boomf’s former CEO, Sophie Dummer and her team along with Boomf’s founder, James Middleton, have created a remarkable brand loved by millions all around the world. We’re hugely excited about working together with the Boomf team and look forward to growing both Splento and Boomf, as our companies move on to the next
stage in their journeys”. This certainly looks to be a greetings card & gifts business that has the hallmark of success stamped all over it. It is indeed exciting times for two businesses, the synergy between which will, without doubt, put the ‘Boom’ back into Boomf.