Estimated reading time: 10 Min

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The best part of life happens in the bedroom. The phrase may be part of a Spanish saying, but that does not make it any less true.

The bedroom, and more precisely the bed, is one of our most precious places. It is where we rest, take refuge, recover, and, why not, experience joy and passion. That is why feeling comfortable with our bed, and with everything we place on it, matters so much.

It was precisely to build that experience, and to ensure restorative rest with style, technology, and innovation, that Santiago Varenkow and Daniela Machado created D&C Home: a brand focused on top-of-bed products, with the ambition of expanding into a broader lifestyle brand for the home.

Today, we spoke with them to discover how Cubbo has helped this innovative company bring better rest to beds across Colombia.

Frank: How was D&C Home born?

Santiago Varenkow: I am a born entrepreneur. I am Venezuelan, I lived for many years in Spain, and I come from a family business with more than 85 years of tradition in the sleep industry, specifically in mattress manufacturing.

However, I had my own aspirations to create something of my own. That is why I came to Colombia and founded two mattress companies: Colchones REM and Boxi Sleep.

Both companies have grown exponentially in recent years, and with them we were able to integrate vertically and set up factories. They have been very successful and well recognized in the Colombian market.

However, last year we wanted to start another project, taking advantage of the understanding I had gained of the Colombian market. That is how the idea for D&C Home was born: a company created to offer a high-quality, attractive, and valuable proposition in a category with strong demand: bedding.

That was a clear opportunity. Bedding was a sector where the offering was very basic and limited, despite being an essential product for good rest.

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A successful track record

Santiago first founded two mattress companies in Colombia in 2014. The success of those companies pushed him to explore new ventures in the same sector: sleep, rest, and home lifestyle.

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Frank: When was this project born?

Daniela: We started this project in 2021. It involved a long planning process to truly identify the type of product we wanted, along with its qualities and specifications.

We needed to understand where we would produce it so it could offer attractive qualities for the Colombian market, while also being strong enough to compete with any other company in the sector.

This category is known as top-of-bed, and it includes everything that goes on the bed: sheets, blankets, duvets, throws, cushions, and more.

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, not only present in the bedroom with all the products that coexist there, but also in the bathroom, kitchen, living room, and beyond.

We want to become a next-generation Bed Bath & Beyond, applying technology and digitizing every sales channel.

Frank: Did you start as a physical store, or were you ecommerce from the beginning?

Santiago: To offer the highest quality at a price accessible to as many people as possible, the model had to be B2C.

We knew from the beginning that if we went through retail or traditional brick-and-mortar, the costs and initial investment would make scalability much more complex.

Also, every time you scale, you have to invest again because you depend on physical spaces and expenses that, in the end, do not add anything to the final consumer.

That is why our DNA has been 100% digital from the beginning: to give consumers the highest quality possible.

That does not mean we will not pursue an omnichannel strategy in the future.

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Read also: Camita Bienestar, delivering products for your pets in hours

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Frank: On the website, you state that your products are made with 100% cotton and extra-long fibers. Quality is a point of pride for you, right?

Daniela: Yes. For us, quality comes first.

It is a bit like mattresses. Bedding is a necessary and essential product because we need it to sleep well, rest properly, and therefore lead a healthy and functional life. It helps us perform in our daily lives.

But unfortunately, it is also a product category where there is a lot of misinformation. Most people simply think that “the more threads, the better,” and they leave it at that.

Many brands have taken advantage of this and use marketing tricks by inflating thread counts to levels that are physically impossible.

For example, you see brands claiming their sheets have 1,800 threads per square inch. That is not possible. First, because physically, that many threads do not fit in a square inch. And second, even if they did, no air would pass through at all.

That is not a high-quality fabric.

That is why the quality of a good textile does not depend only on thread count, but also on the quality of the cotton, in the case of our cotton fabrics, 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 difference between long fibers and short fibers. In the case of our cotton, it has extra-long fibers, which makes it softer, more breathable, and more durable.

And when you combine all of that with excellent manufacturing quality, you end up with a premium product like ours.

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

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

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

Daniela: You can do it without any problem. If you do not like them, you return them. We will not even ask why.

They do not need to have any defects. If you do not like them, you return them, and we cover the shipping costs and refund your money.

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‍Frank: And isn’t that a huge risk for you? Because this type of product cannot be reused afterward, right?

Santiago: Exactly. If you return the sheets to us, whether on day 1 or day 59, we can no longer do anything with them commercially.

All we can do is put them through the required cleaning processes and donate them. We cannot resell them.

But we are so sure you will fall in love with our sheets that we offer this 60-night trial.

Frank: How many returns have you had?

Daniela: To date, none.

We do not use marketing tricks, and we do not say things that are not true. Our products are simply high quality, and we clearly state the thread count, qualities, materials, and manufacturing processes we use.

Nothing is hidden. Our message is one of transparency, security, and credibility.

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Certified quality

OEKO-TEX is a certification that guarantees no substances harmful to your skin or the environment were used. It also verifies that the product is 100% cotton.

D&C Home sheets and products have this certification.

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D&C Home and Cubbo: covering all of Colombia

D&C Home is a project with soul. There is a genuine commitment to giving their best, and it shows in every word from Santiago and Daniela.

That passion drives them to dream big, think about expanding beyond Colombia’s borders, and become a phenomenon capable of competing with the biggest players in the industry.

To do that, they have the support of Cubbo, “their operational arm,” as Santiago accurately describes it.

Frank: Where do you currently sell?

Santiago: We sell throughout Colombia. The type and size of our products allow us to do that, and our deliveries take between 24 and 48 hours. In Bogotá, delivery takes 24 hours.

This year, we hope to start selling internationally.

Cubbo is our operational arm. With them, we handle everything: complete fulfillment.

When a business starts, it has limited resources and many things to validate and focus on. We cannot dedicate ourselves to logistics, which is already complex by nature, because then we cannot focus on what truly drives the business.

We need to focus on product development, positioning, and making the brand known.

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Efficient deliveries

In Bogotá, D&C Home guarantees deliveries within 24 hours through Cubbo’s same-day delivery service.

This was unthinkable just a few years ago and is part of the technological progress Cubbo has brought to the market.

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Santiago: In addition, we could not assume the expense or investment of having a warehouse, distribution staff, vehicles, and the entire logistics chain needed to prepare parcels and shipments.

That would have taken more than half of our available time, and we preferred to invest that time in our core business and in selling our product.

Frank: How did you find 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 through the entrepreneurial ecosystem, so it was a very natural alliance that emerged in a very logical way.

Working with Cubbo has been a great collaboration and a huge relief for us, because we know our product is stored safely and that deliveries are made efficiently, even to the most remote corners of Colombia.

They give us certainty and peace of mind.

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Frank: Was there anything you asked Cubbo for as a must-have condition in order to work with them?

Daniela: There was one thing that was very important to us: having a way to know in real time what was happening with our merchandise. We needed visibility into what we had in the warehouse, what had moved, what inventory was left, and so on. That is absolutely key when you do not have direct control over the warehouse, because you have delegated that operation to someone else.

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 ecommerce business, this was essential for us.

If our only sales channel was the website, we needed delivery to be a competitive advantage. We had to be able to deliver the same day, or as quickly as possible.

We also needed customers to be notified when their order would arrive and to have tracking for their purchase.

Those were the two must-haves we needed from Cubbo, and they delivered on both.

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

Daniela: We want to become the leading brand for home products, but also a brand with personality.

A brand people look for not only because of the quality of its products, but also because of the values behind them.

We care about our customers. We want them to sleep better, have the best products, and build the home of their dreams.

Our goal is to help women. We speak specifically to women, although we know many men also buy from us. But we want women to feel empowered with us and to be able to build the home they have always dreamed of.

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

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

Santiago: For me, it came quite naturally because I already came from this industry.

If you sell mattresses, you are already immersed in the sleep and rest industry.

But the truth is that this project has been more exciting in terms of brand building. It is much easier to make sheets aspirational than a mattress.

They are products that add beauty to your bed, products you have direct contact with and live with every day.

The challenge of making a mattress “sexy” was not easy. This category excites me a little more.

The biggest lesson is that today there are tools that allow you to focus your efforts on the core of the business: developing your products and building your brand.

For example, you can outsource many things that take up your time and drain your energy, such as logistics, which we have outsourced to Cubbo.

Thanks to them, we have been able to run this company with a lean team and reduced expenses.

Daniela: For me, it has been a challenge in every way because I was not an entrepreneur before. I came from being an employee, and my background is also in psychology.

So yes, it has been a challenge. I jumped into the void, as they say, and I am building the plane as I fall.

But what pushed me to create this was that I personally experienced the problem of not finding quality textiles.

That is why we are so passionate about this and put so much love into it.

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Are you looking for an ally that improves your delivery process, compliance, and customer satisfaction?

Contact us. Cubbo is a fulfillment center for ecommerce brands in Mexico and Colombia.