Swedish Startup Gets €550,000 To Send Pastry Abroad

    Startup Pastry Sweden, which is behind the popular site skickatårta.se, that allows home-delivery of cakes and pastry, has secured 5 Msek (€ 550,000) from Industrifonden, a state-owned investment fund.

    Pastry Sweden was started by Magnus Noord and Magnus Äng, who had previously been senior management at EuroFlorist and helped build the brands online presence in Europe. The idea to do a similar thing, but with cake and pastry instead of flowers, arose from there. Just as EuroFlorist is a network of associated flower shops, does skickatårta have a network of associated bakeries.

    They opened for business in April 2011 and have since received orders from over 8500 customers and delivered cakes all over Sweden. Last year the company had sales of about 6 Msek (€ 670 K), but Magnus Noord estimates that the market for confectionery online is worth almost € 30 million just in Sweden. This estimate is based on the assumption that confectioners mediation may be about half as large as the web-based flower delivery.

    The plan is to use the funding for expansion abroad, something that has been started already, with tortdekoracje.pl being the Polish website. Germany is planned next, where they have already build a network of suppliers.

    “Our ambition is to be found in all of Europe within a few years.” says Magnus Noord.

    Pastry Sweden has previously had an investment by Malmö VC firm Spintop Ventures. Together with Industrifonden the total investments in the startup so far are about 8 Msek (almost € 1 M).

    “The business model is based on being able to control an order in real-time to a nearby bakery or patisserie and to guarantee fast delivery. They have shown that they are capable of this and the founders’ extensive experience of e-commerce makes us confident that the they can scale up the operations internationally.” said Lennart Gustafson, Investment Manager at Industrifonden.

    With the funding Lennart Gustafson from Industrifonden and EuroFlorist founder Peter Ljungbeck will also join the board of Pastry Sweden, boosting the startups expertise and connections.

    Sydsvenskan covered the news as well, read more there for further information.

    This article is in collaboration with Øresund Startups, originally by Karsten Deppert. Øresund Startups is a news site focusing on startups in Copenhagen and the other cities around the Øresund strait; Malmö, Helsingborg and Lund. It was initiated by Karsten Deppert and covers news about startups and events from the startup scene. You can follow them at @Oresundstartups.