Kitsy Lane, an Etsy-style social commerce platform startup that lets its users open their own internet boutiques selling jewellery or accessories, has announced it’s closed a $3.5 million Series A funding round, led jointly by Data Point Capital and Longworth Venture Partners. Existing investor Point Judith Capital also contributed to the round. As part of the investment, Data Point Capital’s Scott Savitz, founder of Shoebuy.com, will be joining Kitsy Lane’s board of directors.
Kitsy Lane lets users freely host boutiques on its platform, which also provides marketing and merchandising features such as a master catalog of merchandise; social customer acquisition; and analytics of boutique performance. The site also integrates with users’ Facebook accounts to push boutique merchandise into users’ timelines as a way to grow traffic, sales and community — something it says has helped it grow quickly in the five months since launch.
The startup launched in July 2012 and has more than 22,000 user-owned and operated businesses, noting it’s experienced a 40 per cent monthly growth since inception.
“Kitsy Lane has demonstrated impressive results at such an early stage of its development. The model is ripe for further disruption of traditional commerce offering a turnkey approach for individuals to profitably become retail entrepreneurs,” said Scott Savitz, Managing Partner of Data Point Capital, in a statement.
Kitsy Lane empowers Boutique Owners to run their own online jewelry and accessories boutique on their own time – and make money while they’re at it. Thanks to an easy-to-use, innovative marketing platform, Boutique Owners get to customize their own online storefront, choose the pieces they want to sell, give personal shopping advice, and promote fabulous finds across their social networks. And anyone can do it, creating their own online storefront without the usual risks and headaches of running...
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