After kicking-off their European expansion, Animalbox raises €1.2 million

After raising a €300k seed round in 2013 and merging with Doggybox last September, Animalbox has just announced that they’ve closed another round, this time at €1.2 million with their previous investors Network Finances, L’Accélérateur and Europexpo as well as a group of business angels via crowdequity platforms Anaxago and Fundme.
Founded in 2012, by Antoine Chabassol and Pierre-Henri Coustenoble propose AnimalBox propose for a monthly price of €14.99 or €19.99 a gift box, including food, toys and other goodies for pets. They have various sites offering a range of pet boxes including, Woufbox, Miaoubox, Pawsomebox, and Puurfectbox. With each subscription they also donate a percentage of each sale every month animal welfare and protection associations, a cause that is very important to the founders. 
France is the top market pet market in Europe with 63 million pets (so, approximately 1 pet for each person) and, despite the economic slowdown, continues to be one of the largest and most lucrative pet food/care markets at a value of €5 billion.  Thus, France was the perfect market to test and launch a service such as theirs, which caters to the strong link between owners and their pets.  And markets beyond France? They’ve already successfully expanded their box subscription service to countries where owners have a similar emotional connection with their pets, including the UK, Switzerland and Belgium.  Presumably, they’ll eventually be looking to expand to other markets, particularly in Europe.  It will be interesting to see how consumers in more emerging markets, take to their pet box concept.