Frank & Oak Lands $15 Million to Build Offices In NYC

(Photo via Frank & Oak)

Building a fashion ecommerce brand is clunky. It combines the difficult aspects of product design and marketing the retail business, the most unscalable model of all.

Despite those challenges, men's fashion ecommerce startup Frank & Oak has nabbed $15 million in Series B funding. They'll use the cash to build a bigger marketing team and open a New York headquarters where they can start a community around the company.

Another priority in Frank & Oak's portfolio is Oak Street, its men's lifestyle magazine. Usually, in-house mags are just a combination lookbook/advertisement, but Frank & Oak founder Ethan Song told Betabeat that the upcoming issues are going to move toward editorial content, and away from branded articles and advertisements.

"Most of the new look books don’t include Frank & Oak clothing in them," Mr. Song said. "The reason why we’re taking that angle is because Oak Street as a catalogue is more a document that embodies what our community stands for."

So far, Frank & Oak has done all of its business from Montreal, even with New York as its biggest customer. It's yet to be seen if Frank & Oak continues its growth into the later stages of fashion ecommerce companies, when founders start itching for the move to brick & mortar.