Westwing

E-commerce / home & livingGermany

New to Unitard

📉 Public < $1B

Peak $3 BillionRecorded estimate

~-91%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2020
📈
Peak valuation
$3 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
2022
💸
Last valuation estimate
~$270M

Current status

Public (Xetra: WEW)

The rise & fall

7 moments · 2011–2024

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2011

Founded in Munich

A shoppable home-and-living magazine: curated daily campaigns, later a growing private-label range.

Wikipedia

2020

The lockdown boom makes it a unicorn

Stuck at home, Europe redecorates; Westwing's market value clears $1B.

Dealroom

May 2021

The peak: €65.23 at the top of the boom$3B

The stock hits its all-time high, valuing the company around €2.7B.

companiesmarketcap

2021–22

Lockdown demand reverses

Consumers pull back on big-ticket home spending; sales and margins shrink.

EU-Startups

2022

Slips out of the club

The stock gives back more than 90% from the top; a fraction of the boom-era value remains.

companiesmarketcap

2022–24

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–24

Glassdoor reviews from Munich staff described the comedown: layoff rounds arriving roughly twice a year after boom-era over-hiring, constant strategy shifts and reorganizations, and — per tech reviewers — a later wave tied to a rushed SaaS-platform migration under new leadership.

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Westwing is a Munich-based online retailer of home and living products that sells through curated daily campaigns and a growing private-label range. It rode the pandemic home-furnishing boom to an all-time high in May 2021, valuing it around €2.7B.

As lockdown demand reversed and consumers pulled back on big-ticket home spending, sales and margins shrank; the stock collapsed more than 90%, leaving Westwing worth around €200-250M — a fraction of its peak.

Source: companiesmarketcap / Dealroom / EU-Startups (Oct 2018 Frankfurt IPO; ATH €65.23 May 2021, peak market cap ~€2.7B; ~€160-225M / ~$0.25B by 2025-26)

Founders & leadership

Andreas Hoerning
CEO (since July 2022)
Still there — Chief Executive OfficerLinkedIn ↗
Delia Lachance
co-founder & creative director (née Fischer; was an ELLE Decoration editor before founding it)
LinkedIn ↗
Stefan Smalla
co-founder & CEO 2011-2022
Now Founder & Managing Director at DraxonLinkedIn ↗
Georg Biersack
co-founder
Still there — Founder & Head of Tech OperationsLinkedIn ↗
Matthias Siepe
co-founder
Now Full-time parentingLinkedIn ↗
Tim Schäfer
co-founder
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