The wholesale marketplace Ankorstore has successfully completed a financing round of 250 million euros. The financing round was led by the investment firms Bond and Tiger Global, as the company announced on Monday.
Only two years after it was founded, the company achieved unicorn status with the fresh capital. This is the name given to start-ups with an enterprise value of 1 billion euros that are still in the founder’s hands and are not listed on the stock exchange.
Ankorstore connects over 200,000 retail companies with over 15,000 brands and describes itself as the fastest growing B2B platform in Europe. The company mediates in the wholesale market between independent brands and trading companies in the household, food, fashion, beauty and children’s goods sectors. Since its inception, the number of brands it offers has increased fifty-fold and the number of products for sale by 950 percent.
The vision behind the numbers
“Our mission is to create a global wholesale business and thus strengthen independent retailers,” said Nicolas Cohen, Co-CEO and co-founder of Ankorstore, in a statement on Monday. “The current financing enables us to expand further geographically and to accelerate activities in our European core markets.”
Ankorstore is already active in more than 23 countries. New branches in Italy and Spain are to be opened in the current year in order to guarantee proximity to the brands and trading companies that make up Ankorstore’s decentralized model of success.
“In addition, we will not only scale our business model horizontally but also vertically by adding new divisions and functions to our core offering with five product categories; just recently with ‘Sport & Wellbeing’ and ‘Pets’, ”said Nicolas d’Audiffret, Co-CEO and co-founder of Ankorstore. “In addition, we will invest part of the fresh capital in product and technology development and thus further improve the customer experience of our community.”
The advantages of Ankorstore lie in its low minimum requirements in the wholesale sector. From a minimum purchase value of 300 euros, delivery is free of charge. The minimum order value of 100 euros per brand is quite low in contrast to the usual minimum amounts. The B2B marketplace minimizes the risk for dealers and brands with a payment term of 60 days for dealers and pays for the brands directly upon delivery.