Eyeing An IPO, E-commerce Software Company Volusion Raises $35M To Take On Shopify

Volusion, a company that allows merchants to create an end to end e-commerce store online, has raised $35 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank. This is the first outside funding for Volusion in the company’s ten year history.

Volusion’s software allows anyone to build a fully functioning ecommerce site and includes the ability to control the design of the site, merchandising of products, SEO and social media, as well as payments and processing. Currently, Volusion has 40,000 customers who made more than $2.8 billion in sales last year, and has processed $12 billion in sales. Customers include Disney, Motorola, Chicago Tribune, and 3M.

Volusion’s newest offering, Mozu, is targeted atmid-market to enterprise companies. CEO Clay Olivier tells me that the platform was built with an API-first architecture for customization and integration with other applications, and software. He adds that Mozu will have a usage based pricing model, and will be providing mobile and web support.

As for why Olivier decided to raise debt, he says that he wanted to add value from investors without dilution. And the credit facility will be used to help market and expand Mozu, and prepare the company for a potential IPO in the next year or so.

Volusion competes with the giant in the space, Shopify, which just raised $100 million in funding. Other competitors include BigCommerce, eBay’s Magento. And interestingly, there seems to be a trend of online blending with offline when it comes to commerce. Shopify has transitioned from becoming an online e-commerce platform, to adding in-store commerce capabilities as well. Because Magento is owned by eBay, there are interesting tie-ins with in-store technologies via PayPal. Perhaps others in the space, including Volusion, will follow suit.