Joor raises $16 million to expand its online fashion marketplace for wholesalers
Joor, an online marketplace that connects fashion brands and retailers, has closed $16 million in series C funding as it looks to add more tools to its platform and expand operations in Asia.
The round was led by Japanese conglomerate Itochu and included participation from existing investors Canaan Partners and Battery Ventures. Joor has raised $36 million since it was founded in 2010.
The company currently works with nearly 200,000 retailers and 8,600 brands in 144 nations. Through its platform, Joor offers free and paid tools to brands and businesses to help them collect and manage data and inform production, forecasting, and merchandizing decisions.
Joor CEO Kristin Savilia told VentureBeat in an interview that the company would use the fresh capital to add new capabilities to its platform. “The series C is going to allow us to continue to build the platform, where brands and retailers are making data-informed decisions quickly and creating meaningful efficiency across the supply chain,” she said.
Savilia said Itochu, which has invested in over 150 U.S. and European companies, will be particularly helpful as it expands into Japan, which is the world’s second-largest luxury market, after the U.S. According to some estimates, people spend about 3.6 trillion yen ($33 billion) on luxury goods in Japan each year. A challenge for companies like Joor is that the fashion industry, which generates over $1.5 trillion dollars a year globally, is still largely an offline business.
“Joor’s dominance in North America and Europe make them the natural choice for expansion into the Japanese market. We are excited to continue supporting their strategic growth,” Itochu executive Yoshihiro Fukushima said in a prepared statement.
Savilia declined to reveal the company’s revenues but said Joor’s platform has netted $23 billion in gross merchandise volume across 3.68 million orders. Nearly half of these orders were placed and processed in the last 12 months, she said.
The company, which competes with NuOrder and others, said several of its retail partners, including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Printemps, 24 Sèvres, and Harrods, have moved their wholesale buying process exclusively to Joor’s platform.
Source: VentureBeat
