New Brands for 2012
Beachmint’s innovative approach to celebrity-backed private label product has proved successful as the firm continues to capitalize on room with growth. The most recent funding gained totals $35M from Accel Partners, Goldman Sachs, New World Ventures, Millenium Technology Value Partners and existing investors including NEA, Trinity Ventures, Scale Ventures, Anthem Ventures and Lightbank. This funding brings BeachMint’s financing total to over $75 million to be used to broaden each brand’s global reach, strengthen existing brands, and launch several new brands planned for 2012.
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Fashion Gaming Continues to Grow
London-based startup Fantasy Shopper has been a sweeping success in the world of online gaming since its October 2011 launch. The game that affords aspiring fashionistas the ability to virtually shop to their heart’s content is actually leading to real sales for featured retailers. The firm recently gained $3.3M from Accel Partners and NEA to build out engineering and expand beyond London; first to New York then LA, San Francisco and internationally. The projectable potential within gaming in the fashion industry is a growing trend in recent years and is growing with increasing speed and, according to industry expert Macala Wright, women are making up a majority of gamers with “women ages of 35 and 44 accounting for the largest segment of tablet gamers, the second largest is 18 to 34. The third largest group is males. ”
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Setting Trends, One “Set” at a Time
Changing the way people discover style and set trends, Polyvore allows users to create fashion looks called sets by mixing and matching products from any online store. With Polyvore’s virtual styling tool users search the web for clothing and accessories to be featured in their set. Items are easily dragged onto a blank canvas or into a preexisting template, then can be rotated, collaged, and even embellished with frames and borders and text. Think of the finished result as a virtual magazine editorial. However, with 13 million unique visitors a month, an 80 percent increase over the past year, the site’s traffic surpasses the websites of traditional magazines. Having just raised $14 million in Series C funding, investors too, recognize Polyvore’s potential to become a media company amongst the ranks of Condé Nast.
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Closing in Fast on $15M Total Equity Round
The world of menswear has been forever changed since the 2007 launch of e-tailer, Bonobos. CEO Andy Dunn promised and delivered outstanding fit in pant necessities including chinos, wools, denim, and even dress pants supplemented by other wardrobe staples. Raising a $15M equity round, $8M was closed on January 5th, with six investors contributing. Through the Form D filing, the company is making the equity offering of Series C-1 Preferred Stock and common stock issuable upon conversion thereof. The stake however will not come from Mr. Dunn specifically (Bonobos is marked as the issuer), and is not a part of an M&A deal.
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Bustling Growth, User Desire Fuels Deal to Extend Reach
The rapid growth following Fab.com’s 2010 re-launch has brought the firm’s member base up to an astounding 1.65M members and is growing at an unheard of rate of 350,000 members monthly. Though Fab’s focus on home and design items has brought it to its current standing, members still long for fashion items from Fab. CEO Jason Goldberg notes, “From shirts to skirts to hats to gloves to street wear to shoes to belts and more, we’ve sold them all on Fab and our members have roundly responded with “more please!” With that in mind, Goldberg announced on his blog the company’s first acquisition of NYC-based online fashion marketplace FashionStake.
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Hopes to be the “Quora for Fashion”
Lets face it, seeking out clothes online can really take a lot of time, effort, and sometimes patience. Especially when trying to match that perfect dress you just bought with a new pair of heals. Or the amount of time spent trying to find out what part of wardrobe needs bolstering. Buyosphere wants to be your solution. The startup connects thousands of successful deal-loving shoppers to those who need help to find info on specific items. Using crowdsourcing as a convenience tool, customers, instead of spending hours online, save time through a fun new shopping Q&A experience. Tara Hunt, the name behind the company stated that Buyosphere is “demonstrating the power of peer to peer shopping search.” Pivoting from original its original incarnation Shwowp, Buyosphere closed a $325,000 funding round led by Real Ventures with participation from angel investors, John Granger of Grassfed Capital, David Chamandy of Machkor Holdings, Jesse Kaplan of Seek Capital, and Thomas Merlin.
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Offering Indian shoppers “Pocket Happy” Opportunities
Set to launch by December’s end, Indian e-tailer Pepperfry aims to bring a wide variety of goods to the modern online customer. Founded by Ambareesh Murty, former Cadbury executive and country manager at eBay India, the website will offer over 25,000, what they dub as, “pocket happy” products including Clothing, Furniture & Home Décor, Precious & Fashion Jewelry, Lifestyle Accessories and Personal Care products. Regarding Norwest Venture Partners investment, the firms Managing Director in India, Niren Shah, cited Pepperfry’s “strong team, extensive e-commerce and retail expertise and great execution abilities”.
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Opening Reception @ LIM
Capital Conference 2011 @ FIT
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Kaboodle Founders Bring Fashion Consignment to Mobile
Poshmark, a startup by the founders of Kaboodle, is making thrifting easier. The iPhone app works towards the concept of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The iPhone application gives users a chance to get rid of clothes and sell them through their phone. The company recently raised $3.5 million in Series A financing led by Mayfield fund with participation from Investus Capital, SoftbankVC and Ron Conway’s SV Angels; all were investors in Kaboodle as well. CEO, Manish Chandra, explained the concept behind the company, “every three years, nearly $1 trillion is spent on fashion items that sit in closets.” Poshmark gives fashionable shoppers a reason to create an online boutique through their phones. The virtual shopping experience reimburses the users with a profit, social connections, and designer prices at low cost
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3D Technology Juxtaposes Form and Function
The incorporation of 3D technology into fashion design is vastly increasing. Channeling this incarnation is FashionLab, a new technology incubator created for designers and stylists to explore and test new concepts using 3D representations. FashionLab brings together designers and stylists with engineers of Dassault Systèmes by offering all the necessary tools to create an entire collection. Integrating design, simulation and collaboration tools, designers can see exactly how their ideas will come to life on a three dimensional plane and immediately make any change they can imagine, unlike challenges faced using traditional fabric and pattern design.
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