We’ve raised €2.5M seed led by Future Ventures to replace bubble wrap with wool
As you may know, we at Woola are working to tackle two key problems: the fundamentally broken packaging industry and the massive amounts of sheep wool going to waste globally.
Our solution is a closed-loop packaging solution made of leftover wool that effectively replaces bubble wrap when shipping fragile goods.
“Bubble wrap has been dominating the packaging industry for ages – but its decline is inevitable. The industry is broken for two reasons: fossil fuel reliance and single use mindset. We need to get rid of both to make packaging more sustainable.”
- Anna-Liisa Palatu, CEO and co-founder of Woola
We are excited to officially share that the idea is now backed by Future Ventures. The partners of Future Ventures have made early investments in SpaceX, Tesla, Skype and Planet. The seed round of €2.5M was joined by the co-founders of Veriff and a few other angel investors. Woola’s previous investors include the co-founders of Pipedrive, Bolt and the angel fund Lemonade Stand, along with other angel investors.
“While e-commerce is booming, single-use plastic packaging is out of control. We sent 55 billion non-recyclable bubble-wrap envelopes last year, made with polyethylene, the main source of microplastic pollution. Woola can replace it all with beautiful envelopes made from scrap wool that would otherwise be burned or buried. The world needs sustainable alternatives to the petrochemical economy for a healthier future.”
- Steve Jurvetson from Future Ventures
Anna-Liisa Palatu founded Woola in 2019 together with Jevgeni Širai and Katrin Kabun. The founders were running an e-commerce business and experienced the packaging problem first-hand. The lack of sustainable and scalable protective packaging led to re-discovering wool.
“Sheep wool is an unused resource – more than 200 000 tonnes of wool is thrown away in Europe every year. That’s enough to fulfil 120% of the global bubble wrap demand.”
- Anna-Liisa Palatu, CEO and co-founder of Woola
Woola opened a production facility in Estonia and launched their first product in December 2020.
After a year of focusing on product development and scaling the production, Woola will use the new funds to grow the marketing and sales team, expand to new markets in Europe and further automate production.
Wool Envelopes were Woola’s first product to hit the market to give online stores a good-looking and sustainable alternative to bubble wrap mailers.
Bottle Sleeves are Woola’s second product, targeted at beverage companies – and these will be rolling out in early 2022.
Bubble Wool is an alternative to rolls of bubble wrap. It’s sold in sheets of 1x1.3m and works well for wrapping bulkier products like furniture or art.
