Beauty ecommerce site Coterie is today announcing a seed raise of $1.5 million from SoftTech VC, Javelin Venture Partners and Michael Jung.
Coterie allows women to sign up for exclusive limited deals on beauty brands like Kevyn Aucoin and Butter London. “All of our offers are exclusive collections, meaning you can’t get them anywhere else,” co-founder Catherine Magee tells me. “All the new and best products, not excess or discontinued inventory.”
The company will eventually let customers subscribe to their favorite Coterie-featured beauty products via its “My Vanity” feature. “My Vanity,” which will roll out in three weeks, allows customers to follow brands and subscribe to beauty products they need replenished.
Magee views the company as competitive with Sephora and Beauty Bar, but holds that the “My Vanity” feature, site creative and the personalization of the shopping experience is what sets the startup apart from the incumbents.
“One of the biggest challenges prestige brands have today is that their online retailer partners cannot articulate the product attributes and brand story necessary to sell a prestige beauty product,” says Magee. “With Coterie, brands finally can introduce a new product with the same visual and brand experience consumers get from the offline.”
The startup plans on using the cash to hire more engineers to foster a technology-driven culture and (of course) scale.
