Framebridge adds $17M in funding as it takes custom framing mainstream

We throw around the word disruptor a lot in the startup world, especially at TechCrunch. But Framebridge, a custom framing startup launched in 2014, is actually worthy of that title. And today Framebridge is announcing they’ve closed a $16.7M Series B round, with  Gordon Segal, co-founder of Crate and Barrel joining in as an investor.

The round means that the startup has now raised about $37M total, with follow-up funding coming this round from past investors like NEA, Revolution Ventures, SwaN & Legend Venture Partners.

The startup has turned an expensive and cumbersome activity into a cheap and easy one. Previously, to get something custom framed you’d have to go to a physical store where someone would charge you a ton of money and take a long time to frame your memories.

“I built this business in response to my painful experience framing things that mattered to me – the complexity, inefficiency, and prices were ridiculous,” explained Susan Tynan, founder and CEO of Framebridge.

With Framebridge, you send them your piece using a prepaid label (or upload it if it’s a digital image you want them to print) and it’s framed and sent back within a few days. Pieces start at $59 for a small photo and go up to $189 for an XL piece up to 32″ by 40″ – which is significantly less than you’d pay in a framing shop. The startup achieves these low prices by ditching physical retail space, ordering supplies in bulk and using proprietary technology to make the framing process much more efficient.

But perhaps the most interesting statistic about Framebridge is how young their customer base is. The startup’s largest customer base are millennials, and 40% of their customers are under 35 years old. if you talk to a framing shop they’d probably tell you that no one under 40 has ever entered their store – and for this reason many thought that millennials just don’t care about getting things framed.

But Frambridge has shown this isn’t the case. Contrary to popular belief, young people still value memories and want to get things framed – they we were just turned off by the high prices and archaic turnaround times offered by old-school framing shops. Case in point – one-third of Framebridge’s customers have never had something framed before using the service. And now more than half of the startup’s customers return for a second order within one year.

Framebridge doesn’t necessarily have any major plans related to this funding, at least for now. Tynan explained that the goal is just to continue doing what they are doing, while increasing scale and getting the word out to new customers.