Joor Raises $46 Million for Growth
Joor, the digital wholesale platform for the luxury, fashion and home sectors, has raised $46 million in Series D funding led by Macquarie Capital Principal Finance.
Three previous investors, Itochu Corp., Battery Ventures and Canaan Partners, also participated in the latest round of funding.
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“It’s more money than we have raised to date,” said Kristin Savilia, Joor’s chief executive officer. With the $46 million, Joor has raised a total of $82 million.
Joor powers various virtual trade shows and fashion events and also operates a year-round virtual B-to-B marketplace for brands and retailers. Joor characterizes itself as “a digital ecosystem” for wholesale management with virtual showrooms and Joor Passport, a central online location for trade shows and fashion events.
With the Series D funding, Joor embarks on its “next stage of growth,” Savilia said. “The new capital enables us to accelerate innovation as an independent company and to continue to provide industry leading solutions in service of our broad global network of brands and retailers.”
Savilia said the new capital will help fuel the company’s investment in platform innovation, payments and financing, as well as support continued global and vertical expansion. More specifically, the company is focusing on further expansion in the Asia Pacific region; building up its roster of e-commerce and small and medium-sized retail clients; improving search functionality, and adding to its platform additional brands selling home products.
“We are really focused on the industries we know and love best, luxury and fashion, as well as home fashion, which we branched into last year,” said Savilia, adding that 25 percent of the retail businesses utilizing Joor are looking for home goods.
With e-commerce, Ssense, Revolve and Forward recently partnered with Joor. ShopBop was already on board.
Two weeks ago, Joor launched its Shanghai office, become the first B-to-B wholesale platform to launch operations serving brands and retailers in mainland China. The opening in Shanghai brings to 12 the number of Joor offices around the world. The company is based in New York City and has offices in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Melbourne and Tokyo as well as Shanghai.
“Having data from department stores, e-comm players and SMB all in one place enables wholesale to have the same access to data as d-to-c brands have,” Savilia said.
Last week, Nu Order, a competitor to Joor, agreed to be sold to Lightspeed, the Montreal-based commerce platform. Savilia said Joor is staying independent, with no plans to sell. “Our mission has always been about leaving no brand or retailer behind and being agnostic best positions us to do this,” Savilia said. “We are very bullish about the future.”
With the U.S. and some other countries starting to see life normalize after a year and a half of COVID-19-induced sheltering in, virtual trade shows could lose some traffic with the resumption of physical trade shows. But Savilia doesn’t expect that to impact Joor’s business. “Everybody is sticking with Joor,” she said. “There are still people who are not traveling and won’t travel.”
During the pandemic, almost 100 percent of the traffic on Joor was on desktops. Pre-pandemic, 70 percent of our traffic was on iPads or iPhones. We’ll probably see a 50-50 breakdown,” post-pandemic. “I actually think both desktop and mobile usage will grow.”
Joor Passport hosted 17 events last year, and as of the end of May this year, hosted 17. Another six are planned through the summer. Joor is currently creating its fall schedule.
Joor says it has 12,500-plus brands and 325,000 retailers in 144 countries on its platform and processes more than $1.5 billion in wholesale transactions each month. Retailers utilize the platform for free. Companies on Joor range from luxury conglomerates LVMH, Kering and Richemont, to such brands as Stella McCartney, Valentino, Kate Spade and Dr. Martens, and retailers Neiman Marcus, Harrod’s, Harvey Nichols, Printemps, Dover Street Market and Intermix.
“We continue to be impressed by the capabilities of Joor’s technology platform coupled with its industry leading network of brands and retailers,” explained Anand Subramanian, managing director at Macquarie Capital Principal Finance. “This investment reflects belief in Joor’s talented team, and we see significant growth for Joor as they expand their platform to offer payments and financing alternatives to their global client base. We look forward to leveraging our expertise to support the company’s long-term success.”
Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, the principal investing arm of Macquarie Capital Advisory and Capital Solutions, provides flexible primary financing and secondary market investing solutions for corporate and commercial real estate clients. The company said it has conducted more than $36 billion of debt financing and equity investments 620-plus deals since 2009.
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