Lesara, Berlin-based online fashion and lifestyle retailer, today announced a $40M funding round led by new and existing investors in the U.S. and U.K. The capital is driving the direct-to-consumer retailer's expansion into Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, and the UK. This round brings total funds raised by the company to $60 million.
In 2016, Lesara saw 175% increase in revenue with over 1.5 million active customer base across Europe. The company's current inventory is comprised of 100,000 fashion and lifestyle goods and adds 2,000 styles every week, the equivalent of a seasonal collection for some of its offline competitors.
"The entire Lesara team puts in a vast amount of effort every day to grow our expansion and to continuously improve the shopping experience for our customers," said Roman Kirsch, CEO and founder of Lesara. "The ongoing support and confidence from our existing investors as well as new ones is a confirmation for us, that they believe in our vision and potential just as much as we do and is, therefore, both reward and incentive to keep on going because there is still a lot we want to achieve. We have only started to see the big disruption coming from agile retail and digitalization of commerce."
As the pioneer in agile retail, a smarter, leaner, faster, data-driven version of fast fashion, Lesara analyses external and internal data to determine what products will sell. The vertically integrated merchant needs as little as ten days to spot a trend, have it designed, produced, advertised in the online store, and made available to an international audience.
The ability leverage algorithms in order to identify styles on a week-to-week basis upends the traditional fashion methodology of designing in bulk without consumer demand. The funding into this modern supply chain demonstrates the need for more efficient production cycles and turnaround times on emerging styles.
About Lesara
Lesara is an international online store for affordable & trendy fashion and lifestyle products and a pioneer in Agile Retail. Founded in 2013 in Berlin by Roman Kirsch, Matthias Wilrich and Robin Müller, this e-commerce company takes online retail to the next level. The company has successfully improved the model, Fast Fashion companies such as Zara and H&M, have mastered offline: Lesara needs just 10 days from spotting a trend to making it available for customers throughout Europe - faster and at a better price than any other fashion and lifestyle company. The product selection is a result of an extensive data-based analysis. A special trend analysis tool developed by Lesara identifies trends as soon as they surface. Bypassing middlemen and being in direct contact with the best suppliers worldwide, Lesara manages to produce these trends immediately and make them available for everyone. The hottest trends and daily new products ensure an inspiring shopping experience!
