Luxury consignment retailer The RealReal Inc. is seeking another round of funding.
It has authorized the sale of up to $70 million in new shares, according to the Prime Unicorn Index, which measures the share price performance of U.S. private companies valued at $500 million or more. If The RealReal acquires its targeted funding amount, the retailer would be valued at $1.06 billion.
The RealReal has raised $288 million since its founding in 2011, according to Crunchbase, from backers such as Great Hill Partners, Sandbridge Capital, PWP Growth Equity, Greycroft Partners and Canaan Partners. Its most recent funding was in July 2018 when it raised $115 million.
The consignment retailer had a busy 2018. Besides the funding, it also opened its second-ever bricks-and-mortar location in Los Angeles, sold more than 8 million items and continues to be on track to achieve $1 billion in lifetime sales within the next couple years, Rati Levesque, chief merchant at The RealReal, told Internet Retailer in October.
The RealReal, No. 182 in the just-released Internet Retailer 2019 Top 1000, had an Internet Retailer-estimated 22.0% growth in revenue from 2017 to 2018, with 2018 web sales in excess of $294 million.
In other ecommerce news:
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Magento Commerce CEO Mark Lavelle is leaving the ecommerce platform vendor as the company approaches its one-year anniversary of Adobe Systems Inc.’s $1.7 billion acquisition. “I made this decision knowing that as part of Adobe, everything we worked to build and preserve about Magento will continue to grow and thrive,” Lavelle wrote in a blog post announcing his departure after eight years with the company. He adds that Magento Commerce is now “fully integrated into Adobe Commerce Cloud alongside Adobe’s Marketing, Advertising, and Analytics Clouds.” Magento is the ecommerce platform provider for 140 retailers in the Top 1000.
- Urban Outfitters Inc., which operates several apparel brands such as Free People, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters and ranks No. 46 in the Top 1000, recently had two new Anthropologie executive shifts. Andrew Carnie, president of home garden and international at Anthropologie is leaving his role after six years. The company did not disclose who would be replacing him. Additionally, Hillary Super—president of women’s apparel, accessories, beauty and then co-president for Anthropologie for the last two years—has been promoted to global brand president of Anthropologie. “Under her leadership, sales of apparel and accessories have climbed to new heights,” says Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne. “More recently, she and the Anthropologie team successfully planned and launched the new A Plus line of apparel.”
- Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (No. 68) named an independent chairman and replaced five independent directors as the home goods company struggles to turn around sales. Lead independent director Patrick Gaston was named independent chairman, while Harriet Edelman, Harsha Ramalingam, Andrea Weiss, Mary Winston and Ann Yerger join as new independent directors, the company said. Co-founders and co-chairmen Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein will retire from the board as of May 1. The new board makeup includes 10 directors, nine of whom are independent and six of whom are women, with the average director tenure being less than four years, the company said. The board will form a committee to review the company’s transformation, strategy and structure, and will institute a new executive compensation plan.
- Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1) is hoping an ad-supported music-streaming service will help it sell more smart speakers and other devices that work with its voice-activated Alexa platform. The free service will be available to customers with Alexa software devices who are not apart of its Amazon Prime loyalty program. Prime members already have access to a limited music-streaming service and can purchase a more robust option for an additional fee. The new service will feature general-interest playlists like “Pop Culture,” 80s music and country, Amazon said in a statement. It will compete with existing free services from Spotify Technology and Sirius XM-owned Pandora. Google also announced a similar service. Owners of Google Home speakers can sign up for a free, ad-supported version of the YouTube Music streaming product. Users can request playlists and stations to stream different types of music.
Bloomberg contributed to this report.
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