Luxury Resale store Vestiaire Collective has a new monster round of funding of $20 Million from none other than Condé Nast, which owns notable fashion media properties like Vogue, GQ, Glamour & more. IdInvest also participated in the round alongside previous investors Balderton Capital & Ventech. As reported by the Financial Times, Vestiaire Collective focuses on filtering out counterfeit luxury goods, investing in selecting and verifying luxury goods that are put on its marketplace. The site features trendy luxury goods from the likes of Hermes, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior & more.
This news comes just days after fellow French startup and competitor Videdressing.com announced a smaller investment (~$1-$2M) from Oliver Samwer’s Global Founders Capital, meaning that things will certainly be heating up in the fashion eCommerce space. On the one hand, we see eCommerce players pushing into higher & higher quality of product (the Samwers have bee notably successful with Zalando, a Germany-based fashion eCommerce site worth nearly $1 Billion by some accounts). On the other hand. traditional print media players like Condé Nast are seeing advertising revenues for print shrinking every month, despite their engaged and qualified audience, and are looking for other ways to monetize.
“There’s a whole new world arising in ecommerce,” said Moritz von Laffert, vice-president of Condé Nast International. “There’s a huge opportunity to expand our business.” (Via FT)
With a strategic partner like Condé Nast, there will likely be some strategic integrations of Vestiaire Collective into Condé’s digital media properties – like this Hermés bag? Why not buy a second-hand version? The ability to convert ad impressions into sales directly into Condé Nast’s pockets may offset the declining digital & print ad revenue that traditional media players are seeing.
Update: we previously communicated that Idinvest was a previous investor. We have since corrected the article, noting that this is the first round they are investing in.