Thai Fashion Site WearYouWant Scoops Up $1.5M Series A

Thailand should be a e-commerce company’s dream—it has a high mobile penetration rate (43% according to Nielsen) and social media networks like Instagram are particularly popular there. But e-commerce companies in Thailand still face the challenges like low credit card usage and limited logistics networks.

WearYouWant, a fashion retail site, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding to tackle those problems. The round was lead by Digital Media Partners (DMP), a venture firm that specializes in emerging markets, as well as Japanese e-marketing firm OPT SEA. Other investors include IMG Investment Partners and WearYouWant co-founder Julien Chalte.

Founded by Chalte and Martin Toft Sorensen in 2011, WearYouWant currently carries 450 brands and 12,500 items, and claims “tens of thousands” of active customers. WearYouWant serves as a marketplace, alllowing offline vendors to set up a shop and manage customer orders. Despite months of political unrest in Thailand, WearYouWant says it has seen a triple-digit growh rate over the last six months.

Since credit card penetration in Thailand is low, WearYouWant allows customers to pay cash on delivery and works with two logistics companies, CJ Korea and KWC Logistics, to ship its orders.

Deliveries within two to five days are currently available and the company plans to offer next-day deliveries soon in order to compete with the joint venture formed by Singpost and Alibaba, which invested $250 million in Singpost earlier this year. Other WearYouWant competitors include Lazada and Zalora, both of which are backed by Rocket Internet.