Portfolio

Fashion E-commerce platform LYST announces $14 MILLION series B investment

JAN 23, 2014

Lyst, the fashion ecommerce platform, today announced it raised $14 million in a Series B round led by venture capital firm Balderton Capital, with participation from DFJ Esprit and Accel Partners – as well as new angel investors including Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com) and John Lindfors (Managing Partner at DST Investment Management).

Creating bespoke shopping experiences for each customer, the business grew over 400% in 2012 and a further 400% in 2013. With 2 million shoppers a month, Lyst now generates over $60 million annually in sales for the leading fashion brands and retailers it partners with - including Saks, Burberry, Net-A-Porter, J.Crew, Lane Crawford and Balenciaga.

This investment will enable Lyst to build on its exponential growth, positioning the company as a leading player in the fashion e-commerce space and as a key revenue driver for the fashion retail industry. Specifically, Lyst will be focusing on internationalization and aggressively hiring talent across its teams in London and New York.

"We're thrilled to have Balderton join us on our journey." says Chris Morton, Lyst CEO and co-founder, "2013 was an amazing year for us, particularly as we launched fashion's first universal shopping cart, which is revolutionising the space by enabling shoppers to check out from multiple brands and stores in a single step on site. We're excited to have such a stellar group of European investors - DFJ Esprit, Accel and Balderton - with strong US ties to help take Lyst to the next level."

One of the largest European VC firms with over $2.1 billion under management, Balderton was an early investor in YOOX in 2003, which has since grown into one of the great start-up success stories in Europe and one of the very few global fashion technology companies to exceed $2 billion market capitalisation. Mark Evans, the partner at Balderton who will join the Lyst board, commented:

"We love to invest in European companies that have the potential to disrupt and grow in large global markets – something that Lyst is doing by allowing customers everywhere to build their own fashion stores stocked with the favourite brands from multiple retailers. Their customer value proposition as fashion technology innovators has allowed Lyst to work closely with fashion brands and online fashion retailers globally, which has been the key to the company's extraordinary growth story since launch three years ago, which continues to accelerate. We are excited to be with Chris, Seb and the team at Lyst at an important stage in the company's development."

In 2013, Lyst was named one of the fastest growing companies in the UK by the British Government and won the top award for the leading European startup in Fashion, Art or Music by Techcrunch. The company has raised over $20m to date.

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