)Poshmark or Affirm stock?
The big news of last week was the successful IPOs of 2 new ecommerce players!
Poshmark: “The second hand marketplace” leveraging the momentum around consumers expecting more sustainable consumption
Affirm: “The Buy Now, Pay Later” has been a great solution as people are consuming more products online but don’t necessarily have $949 cash to buy the last Iphone
Also in the news
SellersFunding closes $100 to fund ecommerce merchant growth
Walmart testing smart coolers
Parcel Locker operator HiveBox secure $400M
Webflow software that help you build online shops raised $140M
Checkout.com one-stop shop for payments raised $450M
StartUp of the week: E-com optimization startup Tradeswell raised $15.5M
Gossip of the week: Marc Lore leaves Walmart
Online clothing reseller Poshmark closes up more than 140% on first day of trading
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/14/poshmark-ipo-posh-starts-trading-on-nasdaq.html
Online clothing reseller Poshmark had a great first day trading on thrusday last week! +141% gain on day 1! The company founded in 2011 as a marketplace for second-hand clothing, shoes and accessories have grown in popularity among consumers! The rise of 2nd hand items is highly correlated to the new generation who are way more concerned about the sustainability aspect of consumption. Poshmark compete with companies like TheRealReal, StockX, Rebag and ThredUp, who will win the 2nd hand market race!!
Fintech Leader SellersFunding Closes on a $100 Million Global eCommerce Funding Program With European Investment Manager Fasanara
Who is SellersFunding? Well I asked myself the same question 2 years ago when one of the founders reached out to me for a mentoring session! The company provide working capital to online merchants! Basically if you sell stuff online, you need money to buy and sell! That’s where they help SMB grow and you can imagine that with the pandemic boom on ecommerce, many companies need cash to grow! Congrats Fabio!!
Chinese express locker operator HiveBox bags $400m from Trustbridge, others
https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/hive-box-400m-trustbridge-222688/
HiveBox is the leading parcel locker company in the world with 150,000 lockers across China!! The company offer an interesting combination of delivery, storage, vending machine, lottery & advertising! With ecommerce exploding across multiple category of products, HiveBox is riding the wave of growth at a valuation of $3Bln!!! (that’s pretty amazing for a parcel locker company…)
Webflow Raises $140M, Hits $2.1B Valuation
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/webflow-raises-140m-hits-2-1b-valuation/
Creating an ecommerce online store without coding! That’s basically the value proposition of Webflow! The company compete with the likes of Wix, Squarespace and few others but has found success as it’s used by 100,000 paying customers and more than 2 million users!
Checkout.com Raises $450M
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/briefing-1-12-21/
Checkout if one of the fintech highly focused on ecommerce as they aims to offer a one-stop shop solution for all things related to payments (accepting transactions, processing them and detecting fraud). Almost half a billion of investment! That’s a lot of money! Overall, investors have injected $21.1 billion into global e-commerce companies since 2016 so this is a very exciting space!
Walmart will test grocery deliveries to a smart cooler on customers’ doorsteps
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/12/walmart-will-test-grocery-deliveries-to-customers-homes.html?
Worried about your avocado staying on your porch for few hours after they got delivered? Don’t worry anymore! The next big disruptive idea is here J
It’s a smart cooler!! Sounds amazing no?
As grocery deliveries continues to grow, this smart cooler on customers front porches or near their doorsteps could help increase convenience for many shoppers.
StartUp of the Week: E-commerce optimization startup Tradeswell raises $15.5M
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/13/tradeswell-series-a/
I’m very excited about a company like Tradeswell! While many startup focus on one area of the business, Tradeswell focuses on 6 components of e-com businesses: marketing, retail, inventory, logistics, forecasting, lifetime value and financials. The idea is to have an holistic solution to improve net margins, not only clicks or purchases.
Wish them a lot of success!
Gossip of the Week: Marc Lore
The Billion dollars entrepreneur is leaving Walmart Ecommerce almost 5 years after having sold Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3Bln!
Lore who sold also Quidsi to Amazon for $550Mln is now going to go back to entrepreneurship. When you have sold one company to Amazon and one to Walmart totalling almost 4Bln, you probably could go for retirement but not yet for Marc.
He will focus on building the city of the future with a higher quality of life (maybe he got inspired by Google and the ongoing Sidewalk Labs initiative)
Stay Safe
Cheers
Nabil