D&C Home: Conquering Colombia with Efficient Logistics

Estimated reading time: 10 Min

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The best part of life happens in the bedroom. The phrase is part of Spanish folklore, but that doesn't make it any less deeply true. The bedroom, and more precisely the bed, is our most cherished place: it is where we rest, take refuge, recharge, and why not, where we find joy and passion. That is why it is so important to feel comfortable with our bed and with everything we put on it. 

It is precisely to build that experience and ensure restorative, stylish rest—with technology and innovation—that Santiago Varenkow and Daniela Machado created D&C Home, a brand that covers all top of the bed products and that aspires to expand until it becomes a lifestyle brand for the home. 

Today we speak with them and discover how Cubbo has helped this innovative company bring quality rest to every bed in Colombia. 

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Frank: How was D&C Home born? 

Santiago Varenkow: I am a born entrepreneur. I am Venezuelan and lived many years in Spain, and I come from a family business with more than 85 years of tradition in the rest industry, specifically making mattresses. However, I had my own aspirations to create something of my own, and that is why I came to Colombia, where I founded two mattress companies: Colchones REM and Boxi Sleep—companies that have grown exponentially in recent years and with which we were able to integrate vertically and set up factories. They are two companies that have been very successful and recognized in the Colombian market. 

However, last year we wanted to start another project, taking advantage of the understanding I have gained of the Colombian market, and that is when the idea of creating D&C Home was born—a company that seeks to offer an attractive, high-quality value proposition in a field that was in high demand: bedding. 

That was a clear wake-up call. Bedding was a sector where the offering was very basic, very limited, and moreover it was an essential product for getting good rest. 

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A successful track record

Santiago first founded two mattress companies in Colombia in 2014. The success of these companies pushed them to explore more ventures in the same sector: rest and home lifestyle. 

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Frank: When was this project born? 

Daniela: We started this project in 2021. It was a long planning process to identify exactly what type of product we wanted, the quality levels, and the specifications. We needed to know where we would produce it so that it would have attractive qualities for the Colombian market and also be strong enough to compete against any other company in the sector. 

This category can be called top of the bed, and it includes everything that goes on top of the bed: sheets, blankets, duvets, throws, pillows, and so on. Our long-term vision is for D&C Home to become a brand that expands into every space in the home. We want to be a home lifestyle brand where we are not only in the bedroom with all the other products that live in the bedroom, but also in the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, and so on. We want to be a next-generation Bed Bath and Beyond, applying technology and digitizing all sales channels. 

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Frank: Did you start as a physical store or as e-commerce from the beginning? 

Santiago: To offer the highest quality at an accessible price for as many people as possible, the model had to be B2C. And we knew from the start that if we went for traditional retail or brick-and-mortar, the costs and initial investment would make scalability very difficult.

Besides, whenever you scale, you would have to invest again because you depend on physical spaces and expenses along the way that ultimately add nothing for the end consumer. That is why our DNA is 100% digital from the beginning: to give the consumer the maximum quality possible. That doesn't mean we won't pursue an omnichannel strategy in the future. 

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Also read: Camita Bienestar, delivering pet products to your door in hours

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Frank: On your website you state that your products are 100% cotton and extra-long staple fiber. Quality is a point of honor for you, right? 

Daniela: Yes. For us, quality comes first. It is a bit like with mattresses: bedding is a necessary, essential good that we need to sleep well, rest well, and therefore lead a healthy, functional life—to perform in our day-to-day. But unfortunately, it is a product that most people know very little about. Most people simply think that "the more threads, the better" and leave it at that. And many brands have relied on that, using marketing tricks to inflate thread counts to levels that are simply physically impossible. 

For example, you see brands claiming their sheets have 1,800 threads per square inch—that is not possible. Because if you put 1,800 threads in a square inch, first of all they physically don't fit, and second, even if you could, no air would pass through at all. And that is not quality fabric. That is why the quality of good textiles depends not only on the threads but on the quality of the cotton—in the case of our cotton fabrics—and on how it is grown and where it comes from. Hand-harvested cotton from India, grown with respect for nature, is not the same as industrial cotton from China. 

On top of that, there is also the matter of long fibers versus short fibers. In our case, the cotton is extra-long staple, which makes it softer, more breathable, and more durable. And if you combine all of that with excellent manufacturing quality, you end up with a premium product like ours. 

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Frank: You seem very confident about the quality of your product. 

Santiago: They are the best sheets in Colombia. And we are so confident that we offer a 60-night trial—because we are that sure of our quality. 

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Frank: And what if I want to return the sheets on night 59? 

Daniela: You can do it without any problem. If you don't like them, you return them. We won't even ask you why. They don't have to have any defect. If you don't like them, you return them and we cover the shipping costs and refund your money. 

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Frank: Isn't that a huge risk for you? Because this type of product isn't reusable afterward, right? 

Santiago: Exactly. If you return the sheets, whether on day 1 or day 59, we can't do anything else with them. We have to put them through the required cleaning processes and donate them. We can't resell them. But that is how confident we are that you will fall in love with our sheets—that is why we offer this 60-night trial. 

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Frank: How many returns have you had? 

Daniela: To date, none. We don't use marketing tricks, and we don't say things that aren't true. Our products are simply high quality, and we state exactly the thread counts, quality levels, materials, and manufacturing processes we use. Nothing is hidden. Our message is one of transparency, trust, and credibility. 

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Certified quality     

Oeko-Tex is a certification that guarantees no harmful substances were used—neither for your skin nor for the environment—and also guarantees that the product is 100% cotton. D&C Home sheets and products carry this certification. 

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D&C Home and Cubbo: Covering All of Colombia

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D&C Home is a project with soul. There is a sincere commitment to giving your best, and it shows in every word from Santiago and Daniela. That passion makes them dream big, think about expanding beyond Colombia's borders, and become a phenomenon that surpasses the giants of the industry. 

To do so, they count on the help of Cubbo, "their operational arm", as Santiago aptly describes it.

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Frank: Where do you currently sell? 

Santiago: We sell throughout Colombia. The type of product and its size allow us to do that, and our deliveries take between 24 and 48 hours. In Bogotá, 24 hours. This year we expect to start selling internationally.

Cubbo is our operational arm. With them we do everything—full fulfillment. When a startup begins, it has limited resources and many things to validate and focus on. We can't be dedicated to handling logistics, which is complex in itself, because then we can't focus on what is truly profitable for the business. We have to focus on product development and on positioning and building the brand. 

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Efficient deliveries         

In Bogotá, D&C Home guarantees 24-hour deliveries with Cubbo's same-day delivery service. Just a few years ago, that was unthinkable, and it is part of the technical advances that Cubbo has brought to the market.

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We also couldn't take on the expense or investment of having a warehouse and staff to distribute, vehicles, and the entire logistics chain to handle parcel shipping and deliveries. That would have required more than half of our time, and we preferred to invest that time in our core business and in selling our product. 

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Frank: How did you come to Cubbo? 

Santiago: We came to Cubbo through its founder Brian York, who is also an investor in D&C Home. We have known him for years from the entrepreneur ecosystem, and it was a very natural alliance that emerged in a very logical way. 

And it has been a great collaboration and a great relief for us to work with Cubbo, because we have the certainty that our product is stored safely and that deliveries are made efficiently even to the most remote corners of Colombia's geography. They give us certainty and peace of mind. 

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Frank: Was there something you required from Cubbo that was a non-negotiable condition for working with them? 

Daniela: Well, there was one thing that was very important to us: being able to know in real time what is happening with our merchandise—what you have in the warehouse, what has moved, what inventory you have left, and so on. That is absolutely key when you don't have direct control of the warehouses, because we have delegated that to them. And Cubbo gave us that real-time access, which gives you enormous peace of mind and operational capacity. 

The second thing we discussed with them was delivery times. As an e-commerce business, that was fundamental for us, because if our only sales channel is the website, we had to make that a competitive advantage and be able to deliver the same day or as fast as possible. And also that the customer would be notified when their order would arrive and that the customer would have tracking for their order. Those were the two musts that Cubbo had to meet, and they did. 

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Also read: Someone Somewhere, how it sells to the U.S. from Mexico

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Frank: And in the next five years, what plans do you have? 

Daniela: We want to be the reference brand for home goods, but also a brand with personality. A brand that people seek not only for the quality of its products but also for its values—for how we care about our customers so they sleep better, so they have the best products, and so they can build their dream home. 

Our goal is to help women—we speak specifically to women, although we know many men buy from us too—but we want women to feel empowered with us and be able to build the home of their dreams. 

So in five years we see ourselves at a regional level, leading this category and with a presence in the other spaces of the home.   

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Frank: What lesson do you take away from building D&C Home? 

Santiago: Well, for me it is something natural because I already came from this industry. If you sell mattresses, you are already steeped in the rest industry. But the truth is that building the brand has been even more exciting. It is much easier to make sheets aspirational than a mattress. They are products that give your bed its aesthetic, products you have direct contact with and live with day to day. Making a mattress "sexy" was not an easy task. This category excites me a bit more. 

And the biggest lesson is that today there are tools that let you focus your efforts on your core business: developing your products and your brand. For example, you can outsource many things that take your time and wear you down, such as the logistics side that we have outsourced to Cubbo. And thanks to them, we have been able to keep this company with a minimal team and reduced overhead.    

Daniela: For me it has been a challenge in every sense because I was not an entrepreneur—I came from being an employee, and my background is in psychology. So it has been a challenge. I jumped into the void, as they say, and I'm building the plane while I'm falling. But what pushed me to create this was experiencing the problem of not having quality textiles. That is why we are so passionate and dedicate so much care to this. 

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