RewardStyle is closing on a $15 million Series A round of funding within the next two weeks that will help the company expand internationally and grow its luxury market.
The round, led by New York-based Maverick Capital Venture, represents the first time the company, which helps fashion bloggers monetize their sites, has accepted outside funding. The post-money valuation of rewardStyle is $290 million, the company stated.
“This is purely strategic financing for us,” said CEO Baxter Box, who runs the company with his wife, Amber Venz Box. “The goal of this was to bring on very strong partners for various initiatives.”
Those partnerships include strategic investors such as Russia’s Miroslava Duma, who founded Buro247.com, a fashion, art and film website licensed in 10 countries. Other strategic investors include Nasiba Adilova also of Russia and works for Buro247, and Veronica Chou, president of Iconix China, a company in Hong Kong that helps take American brands to China.
“RewardStyle has distinguished itself by building this extraordinary platform,” Duma said in a released statement. “Idea is 10 percent and execution is 90 percent and the way rewardStyle has executed is pristine.”
RewardStyle plans to leverage the connections and credibility of their new partnerships to further expand into the Middle East, Brazil, Russia, India and China, Box said. The partnerships also help rewardStyle connect to more luxury brands and designers across the world, he added.
“You’re going to see us onboarding incredible publishers and retailers around the world,” Box said. “We also have some very exciting products coming out to help our publishers get maximum profits.”
rewardStyle launched in 2011, generating more than $60 million in sales for its bloggers. In 2015, the platform is expected to generate more than $500 million in sales. Its LiketoKnow.it Instagram shopping tool has driven more than $30 million in sales in its first 15 months. The company has had an annual growth rate of 102 percent since it was founded.
