About

Gifting in weddings is a flawed and frustrating experience. Busy modern couples can’t possibly allocate the time and effort to register for and exchange wedding gifts at physical stores with such limited options. On the other hand, cash gifts are often considered impersonal and can feel embarrassing for couples, their families, and even their guests. The wedding industry in Greece has an estimated turnover of €2billion, accounting for roughly 50,000 weddings per year. The Greek economic crisis combined with the problems associated with the purchasing and receiving of wedding gifts, seem to have turned the custom of wedding gift-giving into a thoughtless monetary transaction between couples and their guests. At the same time, the wedding gift registries that were introduced by large retailers in Greece 30+ years ago, offer limited options and are also considered somewhat outdated.

Solution & Product

The online platform of www.cordella.gr provides a solution for these exact difficulties: Cordella re-invents the wedding gift registry to offer modern couples and their guests, the most beautiful and seamless gift selection experience. It allows them to choose from a wide variety of wedding gifts from numerous brands and stores, with thousands of products, experiences, and the ability to gift cash. Cordella is a one-stop e-shop for all kinds of wedding gifts and all types of couples and wedding guests with its free, fast, beautiful and user-friendly platform. Our goal? To make wedding gift-giving effortless, stress-free and purposeful again!

Innovation & Scalability

Cordella is the only online wedding gift registry that can cover the whole range of different needs and wants of modern engaged couples: • It provides the largest range of product wedding gifts, covering all "traditional" categories such as furniture, decorative items and electrical appliances • It introduces the ability to purchase experiences as gifts • It provides the possibility of creating money "piggy banks", which allow the couple to ask the monetary gifts too • It's quick, easy and free for everyone to use, from wherever they are • Gifts can be exchanged digitally • Gifts that cost over €200 become group gifts (crowdfunding) • It also serves as an e-shop for anyone to buy any product/gift, for themselves or someone they love All in all, the wedding industry in Greece is an untapped yet high-value industry, with scalable opportunities for a retailtech start-up such as Cordella. Expansion in SE Europe is also a greenfield. Our goal is for Cordella to become THE way to gift newlyweds, eventually become a hub for all things wedding, introduce new verticals to the business and even expand gifting to other major life events and beyond.

Traction & achievements

Cordella went live on June 1st, 2021. Since then, we have achieved: •Over 300 couple sign-ups •Onboarding 100+ brands & stores and surpassing 8,000 available gifts on our platform •Reaching over €25,000 in revenue •Counting over 15,000 unique website visitors In October 2022 Cordella transitioned from a Sole Proprietorship business to incorporating as a Single Member P.C. and became a member of the National Startup Registry in November 2022.

Team & Why Us

Michaela Plaka, Founder & CEO, specializes in communications and has worked in digital and 360o advertising campaigns for telco, homeware & fmcg brands, in Greece and the United Kingdom. Dimitris Kalamaras, CTO, has worked in the advertising & publishing industry as a Web Developer, being responsible for building and maintaining projects for numerous corporations in Greece and abroad.

Funding Needs

In June 2023, Cordella secured its first, €100k "Pre-Seed" funding round.