Snaptee, an app that lets users turn their smartphone photos into T-shirt designs, has raised an additional $750,000 from new investors SXE Ventures, Nest, Groupon Hong Kong co-founder Danny Yeung, and Joel Neoh, the CEO of Groupon Taiwan and Groupon Malaysia. The latest funding brings the total Snaptee has raised so far to $1.35 million.
Wai-lun Hong, the co-founder and CEO of Snaptee, says that the latest capital will be used to fund Snaptee’s further expansion into the U.S. and Japan, its two main markets, and also update its T-shirt design platform. The new version of Snaptee is expected to be unveiled before the upcoming holiday season.
Hong told TechCrunch that the updated Snaptee app will have new features to “facilitate how people discover other designers’ work. Users will have more interaction with each other through commenting, taggings and following.” Snaptee currently has about 500,000 registered users.
Though it’s up against a plethora of DIY T-shirt design platform, Snaptee’s differentiation strategy focuses on the ease of its app, which allows users to apply filters and templates to their photos before aligning it on a T-shirt. Users can also “remix” each other’s designs, and the original creator of the photograph gets a small cut of any sales.