French home goods conglomerate Groupe SEB announced yesterday that they had acquired a majority stake in StoreBound, a New York City-based maker of stylish and sometimes tech-forward kitchen gear.
StoreBound, founded by longtime housewares industry exec Evan Dash and his wife Rachel Dash, had built a reputation in recent years as a scrappy, youth-oriented housewares brand. Their DASH product line, which usually features styling reminiscent of SMEG’s popular retro look at a fraction of the price of SMEG, sprinkles Amazon’s the top 100 kitchen category with their low cost air fryers and egg cookers. According to the release, StoreBound had hit $100 million in sales over the past year.
StoreBound also owns Sobro, which started with the company’s Indiegogo campaign for a hybrid fridge/coffee table. A year later the company launched a smart side table and before long they had a standalone brand to sell, well, bro-focused frankenfurniture.
While StoreBound’s tech-forward products were often kinda weird and kitschy (i.e. Sobro), they sometimes released interesting products like their rapid cold brew coffee maker and the PancakeBot, a pancake “printer”.
The acquisition of StoreBound marks the first exit among a new cohort of stylish, youth-focused house and cookware brands to emerge out of the New York startup scene over the past decade, including Chefman and Gourmia as well as newer venture-backed cookware brands Great Jones, Caraway and Pattern Brands.
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