Extend Partners With Guardsman Marking the Company’s Expansion Into Furniture Protection Plans

Furniture World News Desk on 12/10/2020

Extend, a provider of modern product protection, announced the expansion of its API-first extended warranty platform into the furniture industry through its servicing partnerships with Guardsman.

Guardsman is a provider of furniture care, with over 100 years experience and more than 10 million protection plans in force. Extend’s deep integration into Guardsman’s service and product offerings marks its first step into the furniture protection plan space - growing its reach beyond consumer electronics, sports and fitness equipment, auto parts, appliances, furniture, jewelry and watches, medical devices, glasses, and more. Coming off the heels of a $40M Series B round, Extend is scaling operations and providing an up-leveled extended warranty experience for consumers while boosting bottom line profits for some of the top merchants in the country.

The global furniture market is expected to reach a $509 billion value in 2020, in due part to the massive focus on eCommerce the world has seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furniture merchants have shifted a majority of their businesses online, as consumers have become more comfortable making major purchases digitally. Extend is providing this revenue driver to merchants with its modern extended warranty platform that easily integrates into eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Hybris, 3DCart, and supports custom solutions through their easy to use APIs.

“We’ve helped hundreds of merchants across multiple industries seamlessly add product protection offers, and we see a tremendous opportunity to work with furniture merchants to provide our modern and customer friendly protection plans,” said Woodrow Levin, CEO and Co-Founder of Extend. “Extend is transforming extended warranties from an opaque part of the shopping experience into a time and money-saving feature consumers expect retailers to offer. We’re thrilled to partner with Guardsman, the market leader in furniture care, as we enter this exciting new chapter in Extend’s growth.”

Extend fixed the broken customer experience associated with extended warranties and protection plans by eliminating the frustrating claim process, providing consumers with elegant end-to-end servicing, and easy-to-understand plan coverage details. By creating an easy to integrate API-first platform, Extend has democratized the extended warranty offering and enabled merchants of all sizes to offer protection plans for the first time to their customers. Extended warranties provide merchants with an entirely new revenue stream and give customers greater peace of mind when making purchase decisions. 

“Extend provides an unique approach to the warranty customer service experience, allowing for a simple and efficient process,” says Tim Mrotek, Global President, Guardsman. “This is why at Guardsman, we are excited to be partnering with Extend to deliver best-in-class furniture protection plans, mattress protection plans and repair offerings to the marketplace. “

Extend also announced the appointment of DraftKings CEO & Co-Founder Jason Robins to its Board of Directors. Robins joins fellow board members Joe Moss, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Extend, Andrew Pearlman, Founding Managing Partner at Great Point Ventures, and Alex Clayton, General Partner at Meritech Capital. Robins will support Extend’s massive growth and expansion into new industries, while working with Levin to reinvent the $120B+ extended warranty space for millions of merchants and consumers.

“The extended warranty and product protection industry is primed for innovation,” said Jason Robins, DraftKings CEO & Co-Founder. “I’m proud to be joining the talented group of individuals who are leading that change while simultaneously delivering a modern, best-in-class experience for customers and merchants alike.”

Robins co-founded DraftKings in 2012 and has been its CEO since day one. He recently took the company public on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol $DKNG. Robins has built a reputation for expanding DraftKings’ reach across numerous platforms through wide-ranging, forward-thinking partnerships. Under his leadership, DraftKings became the first DFS company to sign a league partnership with Major League Baseball, and Robins led efforts at DraftKings to work with policy makers and regulators to pass smart gaming legislation. Robins’ work has been recognized by the media and his peers with recognition in Fortune’s “40 Under 40,” Sports Business Journal’s “40 Under 40,” Boston Business Journal’s “Power 50: Game Changers,” and “40 Under 40,” among others. 

“I’ve been a board member for DraftKings since 2013 and we’re all very excited to bring Jason onto our board of directors. His expertise in growing and scaling businesses will be vital as Extend continues to bring industry leading extended warranties to new industries and new merchant partners,” added Levin. 

ABOUT EXTEND: Extend is an API-first company that allows any merchant to easily offer extended warranties and protection plans while providing the merchant's end customers with a vastly improved and modern support experience that eliminates many of the issues customers face today with legacy providers. Extend is partnered with leading retailers across a number of industries, including Peloton, iRobot, Harman/JBL, Advance Auto Parts, Traeger Grills and over 150 additional leading brands. The company’s modern and digitally-native solution delivers an up-leveled product protection experience that results in a win for merchants and their customers. Headquartered in San Francisco, Extend also has offices in Dallas as well as a dedicated remote team. Extend has raised over $57 million from investors including Meritech Capital, PayPal, GreatPoint Ventures, and others. For more information, visit https://www.extend.com.

ABOUT GUARDSMAN: Guardsman has been a leader in furniture care since 1915, delivering quality products and services for the protection, care, and repair of wood, fabric, and leather furnishings and bedding products. Guardsman products include polishes and cleaners for fine wood, leather, and fabric furniture, as well as a complete line of furniture maintenance products for touch-up, repair and spot cleaning. Guardsman is also the leading provider of Furniture Protection Plans in the countries where it does business, with nearly 10 million protection plans in force throughout the world. We visit hundreds of thousands of homes every year to successfully repair furniture. Leveraging Guardsman’s talented network of furniture professionals, Guardsman also offers on-site repair services to residential and commercial customers. With nearly a century of expertise in the furniture care business, Guardsman is an established, secure, and committed partner to its customers and its retailers.For more infomration, visit https://www.guardsman.com/en/.

ABOUT DRAFTKINGS: DraftKings Inc. (Nasdaq: DKNG) is a digital sports entertainment and gaming company created to fuel the competitive spirits of sports fans with products that range across daily fantasy, regulated gaming and digital media. Headquartered in Boston, and launched in 2012 by Jason Robins, Matt Kalish and Paul Liberman, DraftKings is the only U.S.-based vertically integrated sports betting operator. DraftKings is a multi-channel provider of sports betting and gaming technologies, powering sports and gaming entertainment for 50+ operators across more than 15 regulated U.S. and global markets, including Arkansas and Oregon in the U.S. DraftKings’ Sportsbook offers mobile and retail betting for major U.S. and international sports and operates in the United States pursuant to regulations in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. DraftKings’ daily fantasy sports product is available in 8 countries internationally with 15 distinct sports categories. DraftKings is the official daily fantasy partner of the NFL, MLB and the PGA TOUR as well as an authorized gaming operator of the NBA and MLB and an official betting operator of the PGA TOUR.