Little Black Bag Receives $8 Million in Funding

Leading the Trend in Trading Fashion Online

In August, social commerce site Little Black Bag declared that it has received $8 million in Series B funding.  GRP Partners and DCM both contributed, whereas GRP Partners took the lead.  With this round of funding, Little Black Bag has altogether raised $10.75 million.

Little Black Bag (LBB) will utilize the funding to increase its marketing and merchandising talents, drive sales and gain new customers, add more brands, and bring new ideas to online shopping.  LBB currently generates more than 1 million trades among its users every month.  Word about LBB has spread across all the social media platforms; this includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. A partner of GRP Partners, Mark Suster said, “Little Black Bag has built a social network around shopping.  The engagement metrics, social interactions and traffic patterns are unlike any eCommerce company I’ve seen.”  DCM general partner David Chao also expressed, “When we invested in the Series A, we made a bet that the experience would find a happy heart among online shoppers.  The early results tell us that this is certainly the case.  With the Series B, we believe that little Black Bag will become the definitive social shopping community online – and that is incredibly exciting.” 

Little Black Bag was six months old when it received the Series B funding.  Its concept is derived from the Japanese “fukubukuro”, which is lucky bag sale.  On the website, each customer has a personalized selection of items based on fashion questionnaires that they have answered and they can trade these items in their bag with other members online.  LBB is a combination of social media, eCommerce, and gaming.  Word-of-mouth among its customers have encouraged LBB’s fast growth.

Upon reading the press release, I couldn’t help but try out Little Black Bag for myself.  However, my excitement was diminished when I saw how limited the selection of items were.  As a fashion insider, I hardly recognize any brands that I was interested in.  The only benefits were the low price points and fun in trading.  However, with no fashion items to yearn for, there is no motivation for me to trade and make purchases.  In order to be recognized as a “fashion-forward” eCommerce site, LBB definitely needs to add more brand names to their selection. Hopefully they will be able to accomplish this with the new funding. 

By Luyao Li

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