DESIGN MARKET
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
DESIGN MARKET was a Paris-based online marketplace for vintage and second-hand designer furniture, headquartered at Boulevard Exelmans in Paris. It aggregated the catalogs of thousands of galleries and antique dealers across Europe, connecting interior designers, architects and consumers with one-of-a-kind 20th-century design pieces delivered to the home. After more than ten years in operation, the company entered receivership in December 2023 and was placed in judicial liquidation on September 27, 2024; its assets were taken over by the Dutch marketplace Whoppah.
02 / DESIGN MARKET FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
Paris Commercial Court judgment published on societe.com (opened): DESIGN MARKET SAS (SIREN 803323252, vintage furniture marketplace of Lionel Obadia/David Mimouni) was placed in redressement judiciaire on 27 Dec 2023 with cessation of payments dated 17 Nov 2023.
The court recorded cessation of payments on 17 November 2023 as the basis for opening redressement judiciaire.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Liquidation
Societe.com RCS/BODACC extract: Tribunal de commerce de Paris opened redressement judiciaire 27 Dec 2023 (cessation of payments 17 Nov 2023, file P202303669); on 27 Sep 2024 converted to liquidation judiciaire and approved a plan de cession to Whoppah BV.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
A receivership that cannot restore solvency ends in liquidation: the observation period bought time but no buyer for the business as a going concern.
- 02
In a court-ordered asset sale, customers with unpaid orders become unsecured creditors of a company with nothing left.
- 03
A decade of partnerships does not protect against a balance sheet that stops working.
- 04
The brand can survive its company: the marketplace assets continued under Whoppah after the liquidation.