This week, UK-based startup Boticca announced that it had acquired L’Atelier De La Mode, a French designer marketplace whose 100,000 customers represent a 25% market share increase for Boticca, who now counts 500,000 customers globally. The acquisition follows their $4 Million round of funding led by MMC Ventures, a fundraising round which was predicted to help them grow internationally.
France, CEO Kiyan Foroughi says, has always been Boticca’s number one non-English speaking market, and given their seed investment by ISAI & the fact that both founders grew up in France, it is a ‘homecoming’ of sorts for the website.
“France was the logical geography for us to begin our internationalisation strategy. It’s our number one non-English speaking market, fourth globally in terms of sales after the UK, the US and Australia. The French market is full of potential and we look forward to making the most of it.” Kiyan Foroughi, CEO and co-founder
Series A investments don’t traditionally go towards acquisitions; however, Boticca is not quite the traditional company. I sat down with Kiyan just a few weeks ago to talk about the company’s strategy, and it was clear that where he saw the growth opportunity, in addition to international, was in streamlining user acquisition. This becomes crystal clear when looking at the acquisition numbers above – a 25% addition to their database of users, in addition to the redirect from the Atelier de la Mode website towards Boticca, represents a new customer acquisition channel for them.