With super grit, Nigerian startup, Taeillo, is determined to serve customers before anything else, saying the furniture company has raised funding to scale its online furniture e-commerce platform for the best customer service and experience.
Taeillo, tackling the issues of delayed delivery has gone ahead to raise $2.5 million in “expansion” funding from Aruwa Capital, a Nigeria-based early-stage growth equity and gender-lens fund.
In a statement, Taeillo said it is an alternative for customers who incur high costs when they import furniture (combined with an unstable exchange rate) and have to endure long wait periods of three-six months before the furniture is delivered.
Founded in 2018 by Jumoke Dada, the online furniture seller is purely indigenous and super ready to serve customers from all nook and cranny.
Consumertrics also reminds you that Taeillo has always stuck to its knitting of working only with authentic product offerings by infusing cultural elements, which the superstar startup likes to call, “Afrocentric furniture.”
According to the CEO “Sometimes, as a modern business, you must deal with crude suppliers. But recently, we’ve had to change our suppliers to shorten the time we get the materials. Right now, we’re also working around strategic partnerships with third-party logistics companies and might set up a logistics arm to help us improve our deliveries.”
“With the funding, Taeillo intends to reduce delivery times to about three-five days by pre-manufacturing some of its best-selling furniture (for instance, the “Amakisi” table) instead of waiting till customers make orders before starting production.”
The Taeillo boss also hinted: “We’ve done a lot of work with less. So now, we want to get outstanding talent that will take us to the next growth stage. Also, we want to increase our market share, optimize operations, hack our supply chain and ensure that customers have a great experience,” expressed the chief executive of the online furniture retailer, who made over $1 million in annual revenue in 2021.
According to Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, founder and managing partner at sole investor Aruwa Capital: “Investing in Taeillo aligns with one of her firm’s investment objectives: backing women founded- and led startups.
Just recently, Aruwa Capital ‘who’ is barely three-years and run by an African woman, closed a $20 million+ fund from Visa Foundation and other LPs to invest in 10 startups across fintech, healthcare, renewable energy and essential consumer goods serving the female population.
“In line with Aruwa’s gender lens investing strategy, Taeillo is founded and led by a woman and has a 50% female representation in its management team,” she said in a statement. “… The company [Taeillo] has maintained its innovative model in a traditional brick-and-mortar industry, creating a unique value proposition for its customers in a fast-growing, underserved market. By leveraging technology in its value chain, Taeillo has been able to achieve exponential growth in less than 2 years, achieving results that take traditional furniture companies decades to achieve.”
