e-Commerce & more I 28th Sep to 4th Oct - #66

An unicorn is born in LATAM!

The big news of the week is VTEX (The Shopify of Latin America) raising $225M at a 1.7B valuation for its ecommerce platform solution.

Other news includes a series of fundraising showing strong momentum on ecommerce, COVID is not bad for everyone!

-      Exotec raises $90 million for its ecommerce warehouse robots

-      Amazon Live shoppable livestream takes off

-      Prime Day coming soon, Oct 13th & 14

-      Allbirds raises $100M despite pandemic

-      ShipBob Logistics Raises $68 Million

-      Online garden shop Bloomscape raises $15M

VTEX raises $225M at a $1.7B valuation for e-commerce solutions aimed at retailers and brands

VTEX, which builds e-commerce solutions and strategies for retailers like Walmart, AB InBev, Motorola, Sony, Walmart, Whirlpool, Coca-Cola and Nestlé is one of the leading platform in LATAM.

The platform revenues has been growing in the past year at a rate of 50% before the pandemic and now growing 114%! COVID is not bad for everybody!

While Shopify (125Bln market cap), BigCommerce (5.7Bln Market cap) and other ecommerce platform have seen significant growth in times of COVID, we are seeing the competition increasing in this exciting space. Which platform will raise next? Prestashop? 

Exotec raises $90 million for its warehouse robots

While ecommerce is growing, the needs for robotics solutions to enhance logistics are growing too!!

Exotec (A French based start-up) offer semi-automated warehouses for e-commerce clients. These solutions bring productivity improvement combine with the ability to execute orders faster & cheaper. This kind of solutions give us an outlook on how the future of warehousing automation will look like….

Actually!! The future is now….

Amazon Live shoppable livestream takes off 

Social commerce is booming and livestream shopping is taking off! Interesting to see Amazon leading the way here on this trend in the US while the other major social media networks have not done an effective push on this (yet)….

In China (the leading economy when it comes to online commerce), livestream commerce format is already one of the main way to sell & promote products.

Amazon Prime Day coming soon, Oct 13th & 14

Amazon announced that its famous sale event Prime Day will be held Oct. 13–14.

What does this tell us?

Amazon has stabilize the peak in demand due to COVID and is ready to take a huge boost of order! Last year the company sold $280.5M during the event and we can expect this number to go up this year…

Prime Day was announced in short notice this year! Why? Well, Amazon’s Prime day is not an Amazon event anymore, last year, an entire ecosystem of 250+ retailers offered their own discounts around the event to leverage it. Announcing it in short notice gives them an edge as others won’t have so much time to prepare…

Allbirds raises $100M despite pandemic

Allbirds is one of the iconic DTC (Direct To Consumer) brands in the world of ecommerce. The company is raising money to expand products and expand physical store network.

Interesting to see a DNB (Digitally Native Brand) expanding in physical retail while most of the brands are closing stores! Omnichannel strategy is key and they know it!

ShipBob Raises $68 Million in Series D Funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 to Expand its Global Ecommerce Fulfillment Solution

In the world of Ecommerce, Logistics is a COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, not a support function! I’ve been saying this for years and we are really starting to see it now.

ShipBob, an ecommerce enablement technology company that provides fulfillment to ecommerce businesses just announced $68 million in funding to grow its global fulfillment network.

I love when the media talk about “ecommerce technology fulfillment provider”, if you are not a technology enabled company, you are not a player in ecommerce, period.

StartUp of the Week: Bloomscape

Online garden shop Bloomscape raises $15M Series B, acquires plant care app Vera

I get surprised everyday by the impact and consumer behavior changes that COVID has created. Bloomscape a company that ships live plants straight from greenhouses to customers’ homes is raising $15M as the number of people become interested in growing plants at home grew significantly in times of pandemic.

Have you started growing tomatoes in your garden? My wife has tried to convince me but she was not successful so far…maybe one day.

Cheers, enjoy

Nabil