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Shopping Club Brands4Friends.de Raises EUR 10 Million

Files under: News, Tech, Web 2.0
Posted by: Quintura @ 14:26 [26. 11. 08]

The concept of online shopping clubs where members can buy designer brands at discount prices has got a real traction across Europe. First, it was vente-privee in France 2001. Then, came brands4friends.de in Germany in 2007 and KupiVIP.ru in Russia in 2008. Both were started with early-stage investments from Mangrove Capital Partners. In spite of the global financial crisis, today comes the news of one of the largest e-commerce financings on the year.

brands4friends.de, which is operated by Private Sales GmbH out of Berlin, has announced that the company raised EUR 10 million in the third round of funding led by Partech International. The round was joined by return backers Mangrove Capital Partners and Holtzbrinck Ventures, amongst others. In December 2007, the company raised EUR 5 million in a round led by Mangrove.

brands4friends.de, which was launched online in September 2007, has 1.2 million online club members in Germany and is one of the fastest growing e-commerce sites globally with up to 10,000 new members daily. Its current revenue run rate is EUR 30 million per year. The online shopping club sells original goods from renowned fashion and lifestyle brands exclusively to its members at significantly reduced prices.

The company was founded by Team Europe Ventures (a seed-stage fund of StudiVZ co-founder Lukasz Gadowski, Kolja Hebenstreit and Jan Backers), business angel investor Oliver Jung, brands4friends CEO Christian Heitmeyer and Constantin Bisanz. The latter two were awarded the German Entrepreneur Prize in November by the Harvard Business School Association of Germany.

I have recently spoken with Oskar Hartmann, CEO of KupiVIP.ru, who pointed to a very high conversion rate of site visitors to online club members and the fact that some of designer goods, for instance, Dior accessories were sold out in just several hours after sale started.

Disclosure: Mangrove Capital Partners is an investor in Quintura.

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