News
Amazon is launching a personal shopper service that acts as an at-home stylist.
The retail giant has unveiled ‘Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe', a styling service for Amazon Prime members that will see them offered a personalized selection of fashion pieces from across its womenswear selection of clothing, accessories and footwear. After completing a survey, up to eight pieces per month are chosen by stylists based on customers' size, budget and style, and shoppers can review them before having them sent to their home for a seven-day try-on period at no upfront cost. Clients can then purchase pieces, or return them using the retailer's resealable packaging.
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Robinhood, a California-based platform to invest in stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies, from a phone or desktop, has raised $323M in Series E funding.
The round, which valued the company at $7.6 billion, was led by DST Global, with participation from investors including Ribbit Capital, NEA, Sequoia, and Thrive Capital.
The company is using the funds to continue to expand operations and build the products.
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On Thursday, the Italian womenswear label introduced to the media in Milan a new clothes hire initiative called ‘Pleasedontbuy’.
“Like many others, our label is positioned in a market segment I define as ‘alternative luxury’. We were looking for a way of differentiating ourselves and standing out from the others, and not just in terms of style,” said Twinset boss Alessandro Varisco. “The idea came to me on December 19, watching a show on Netflix. Nowadays, you can rent anything, so why not offer the opportunity of renting high-quality, 100% made-in-Italy clothes directly from the producer?” he added.
From next September, Twinset will therefore install special sections dedicated to the Pleasedontbuy project at eight of its Italian monobrand stores, where the label will regularly feature capsule collections of clothes for special occasions such as ceremonies, birthday parties or job interviews. The clothes will cater especially to young, generation Z customers, who currently account for only 5% of Twinset’s clientèle.
According to Varisco, Pleasedontbuy has several advantages over traditional online clothes rental formulas: the clothes can be tried in-store, they come directly from the manufacturer and they are always laundered and in mint condition. Indeed, Twinset has set up, besides an ad hoc logistics organisation, also an internal laundry service and a seamstress studio for minor repairs.
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The prospect of a multibillion-pound bidding war for Just Eat sent shares in the FTSE 100 online food delivery company surging by 30%.
Just Eat agreed terms with its Dutch rival Takeaway.com in a deal that would create one of the world’s biggest online food delivery companies.
When announced, the £9bn all-share deal valued Just Eat shares at 731p but a subsequent 4.5% rise in the Dutch company’s price to €87.30 (£79.20) on the Amsterdam stock exchange lifted the value to 764p a share.
Speculation of a rival bidder pushed Just Eat shares comfortably above the offer terms, however, sending them surging to 828p.
Under the terms of the agreement, Just Eat shareholders would receive 0.09744 Takeaway.com shares for each Just Eat share and would own 52.2% of the combined group. It would be headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on the London Stock Exchange, with a “significant part of its operations” in the UK.
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One of the most exciting trends in consumer technology relates to “wearables” – clothing items or accessories that can be integrated with technology to provide a particular service. Such products have already made significant inroads into our daily lives, with the most obvious examples being American products – the FitBit and the Apple Watch (the Chinese wearable market is dominated by Xiaomi). However, a cohort of young British companies have also sprung up in this sector to create new commercial niches with undeniably fascinating products.
The UK’s wearables startup sector was turbocharged in April by its largest raise yet – $42m by femtech leader Elvie. Capital for this round was supplied by Octopus Ventures, impact investor Impact Ventures UK (managed by an arm of the Princely House of Lichtenstein’s family office), and IPGL, the investment vehicle of British billionaire and “city grandee” Michael Spencer.
The next largest raise in this sector goes to WaveOptics, based in the high-tech hotspot of Milton Park in Oxfordshire (alongside Immunocore and Tokamak Energy). In somewhat of a sci-fi vein this company has developed augmented reality technology to overlay normal glasses. Their most recent raise, €23m in December last year, was backed by the IP Group, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, and Octopus Ventures.
Other startups, whilst raising less capital over the years, offer exciting products nonetheless. DNAnudge, a personalised genomics company and spinout from Imperial College London, provides a service whereby they map their customer’s genomes. They then offer tailored health advice according to the particular person’s DNA. As part of this, they have designed a wearable called the DnaBand. This wristband can scan a particular food item whilst someone is shopping. It then lights up in either a red or green, indicating whether the product is a good match for their DNA.
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In May, Checkout.com became the UK’s latest unicorn startup, and the first to reach such a valuation through a Series A funding round. They’d kept very quiet up until this point, having bootstrapped their way to a turnover of £35m in 2017 after just five years of operations.
Also raising in May, WorldRemit also became a unicorn through their Series D funding round, reaching a valuation of over $900m. A close competitor to leading international transfer startup Transferwise and the industry incumbent Western Union, WorldRemit allows users to transfer money to international accounts. This service is mainly used by expat workers looking to return earnings to family and friends abroad.
Monzo needs little introduction, but is without a doubt one of the UK’s two leading consumer challenger banks, alongside Revolut. This large funding round will help the company roll out its app in the US, as it seeks to enter new markets and outcompete its myriad of rivals. This round was led by America’s most successful startup accelerator Y Combinator, via their “Continuity” growth fund.
One of the biggest raises ever by a British Insurtech startup, Zego’s funding will be used to enhance their online platform, which provides insurance products to workers in the rapidly growing gig economy. The company’s main partners include Deliveroo, Uber, Uber Eats, and Stuart, illustrating where their market lies: freelancers providing mobility services to new tech companies operating in the food delivery, courier, and ride hailing sectors. The round was led by Target Global, a Berlin-headquartered VC fund that opened a London office in April.
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A survey of over 2,500 consumers in the UK has found that online pure players experience 50% lower online sales than retailers with a physical presence.
The research, released by CACI, the consumer and location intelligence specialist, showed that online sales are an average of 106% higher within a physical store’s catchment. And this rises to 127% for fashion and 124% for the sportswear sector, demonstrating what CACI has called the ‘halo effect’ of physical retailing.
CACI explained that the so called ‘halo effect’ underpins the role stores play in influencing purchasing decisions. Over 50% of online spend is still influenced by a bricks-and-mortar store either due to click and collect or because consumers are using stores as showrooms to try on clothes before making a purchase online.
The findings come as more and more retailers choose to reduce their store portfolio to protect their business amid tough trading conditions on the UK high street. National chains including New Look, Mothercare, M&S and Boots are shutting locations and focusing on growing their online presence to adapt to the rise of online shopping. But the report reveals that completely disappearing from the high street might not be the best solution.
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Fintech startup Curve has just announced a $55 million funding round from a group of investors as part of a successful Series B funding round. This brings the startup’s valuation to $250m.
Curve’s growth has been pretty impressive over the years. In 2016, it raised $2m in a seed funding round to get its product out to the market. In 2017, the fintech raised $10m in a Series A round to boost its growth, build new features and recruit more staff.
The Series B will mark the beginning of a new era in banking – an Over-The-Top Banking Platform that provides a better banking experience, and places Curve in the top five UK consumer fintechs next to Transferwise, Monzo, Revolut and Starling.
The round is being led by Gauss Ventures, a fintech investor whose te
am has a track record of funding some of the brightest UK fintechs, as well as backing high impact technologies that reshape industries, and comes less than two years after Curve secured its Series A investment.
Curve is available in 31 European countries and plans to use the fresh funding to expand its product offering in the UK, Europe and overseas. It will officially launch into six European markets later this year: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, and aims to launch its operations in the US by mid next year.
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Unibuddy, a London-based edtech startup, secured $5m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Fred Destin of Stride VC.
The company intends to use the funds to:
- grow the team, which currently spans 4 continents,
- focus on US expansion, and
- create new products.
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London-based business banking fintech firm Soldo has today closed a $61m (£48.7m) series B funding round, led by Battery Ventures.
Battery joined the round as a new investor alongside Dawn Capital, and existing investors Accel and Connect Ventures. The venture capital firms have previously backed the likes of iZettle, Facebook and Slack.
Soldo, which provides businesses with a dedicated spending account to streamline expense management, has now raised a total of $82m. The funding will be used to scale into new European markets, and double its workforce in the next year.
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