QUQON↓Sanders-Kauffmann
Situation
"What annoyed me was the competitors' one-size-fits-all approach," Markus Hössinger said in 2019 about why he started QUQON. From an entrepreneurial family in St. Pölten, he founded the brand in 2017 and sold mattresses online through a configurator: length, width, firmness and comfort zones are matched to weight, height and sleeping position, separately for each side of a double bed. Production was in Austria; duvets, pillows and bed linen rounded off the range. According to Hössinger, more than 1,000 mattresses had been sold within eighteen months. The market was shifting. The international hype around mattress start-ups had cooled, and in Germany the provider Muun had gone into insolvency. Hössinger was looking for a strategic investor with whom he could keep growing and broaden his entrepreneurial scope.
Process
As exclusive adviser, IGCP took charge of structuring and executing the strategic investor search on Hössinger's behalf. For a direct-to-consumer brand of this size, a great deal depends on sourcing and manufacturing. A partner from the bedding industry can contribute materials expertise, production capacity and trade relationships that an online seller would take a long time to build on its own. The eventual partner had also stated publicly that it intended to grow both organically and through acquisitions, explicitly including strategic stakes in suitable companies. QUQON, for its part, offered something manufacturers often lack: direct access to end customers through its own online shop.
Outcome
At the end of 2021, Sanders-Kauffmann GmbH of Bramsche, Lower Saxony, came on board as QUQON's strategic partner. It combines Sanders (founded 1885) with the Kauffmann brand (since 1823), finishes down-proof fabrics, processes down and feathers and, by its own account, employs around 700 people and is present in over 40 countries. According to a 2020 company announcement, Sanders-Kauffmann was backed by the Austrian Austro Holding. According to QUQON, down duvets and pillows made by a traditional German manufacturer were added in 2022. In 2025 the brand moved into an office with showroom in Krems an der Donau; in August 2026 it marked its ninth anniversary, still led by its founder.
What the case shows
The strategic partner for a young direct-to-consumer brand can come from a very different business world. At QUQON, a bedding manufacturer with more than 200 years of brand history met an online configurator from St. Pölten. Such a combination works when each side contributes what the other lacks – materials and manufacturing expertise on one side, access to end customers and product ideas on the other. It is worth noting that the brand remained independent after the investment and is still led by its founder. For founders of a consumer brand, it is therefore worth looking along their own supply chain: a partner from there can achieve more than a purely financial investor.