Singapore’s Love, Bonito raises US$13M to expand its online womenswear business in APAC
The online fashion brand has both online and retail presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, in addition to shipping internationally
Singapore’s home-grown digital-first womenswear label —Love, Bonito — today announced that it has secured US$13 million in Series B funding led by Kakaku.com, owner of product and price comparison site Priceprice.com.
Existing investor NSI Ventures also returned to join the round.
The capital will be used to bolster Love, Bonito’s product, data and engineering teams; build brand relevance in new markets across Asia Pacific; and also to expand in existing markets.
With a current headcount of 80 team members, the fashion brand currently has both online and retail presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, in addition to shipping internationally.
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“With our latest fundraising initiative, we will continue to strengthen our omni-channel strategy and create even more meaningful offline, in-store experiences that complement our online offerings to better serve our shoppers – the Love, Bonito woman,” said Rachel Lim, Co-founder of Love, Bonito.
The company has previously raised an undisclosed sum in Series A financing from NSI Ventures in 2016.
Love, Bonito started out as a passion project in 2006, and became a full-fledged company in 2010. It has built an online community of fashion lovers, and claims that the average customer makes over four purchases a year and the average sell-through rate is over 70 per cent within one month.
“We look forward to benefit from Kakaku.com’s consumer and technology expertise and we are excited to continue to leverage NSI Ventures’ hands-on approach to helping companies scale globally. The digital consumer is increasingly discerning, and we are confident that we will be able to provide an unrivalled retail experience across online and offline touchpoints seamlessly through our constant innovation,” said Dione Song, Chief Commercial Officer at Love, Bonito.
With E-commerce sales in Asia Pacific projected to grow 2.5 times to US$3,299.36 billion by 20211, the online space is becoming increasingly crowded.
Founded in 1997, Kakaku.com is an online company with a diverse service portfolio across multiple verticals and has a proven track record of continued growth and high profitability. In recent years, the company has begun building a presence in Southeast Asia, starting with Priceprice.com, a product and price comparison site operating in four countries, and a recent investment in Moneysmart.sg, Singapore’s comparison site for personal finance.
NSI Ventures is a Singapore headquartered VC fund and focuses on Series A and B investments in technology companies based in Southeast Asia. Key areas of investment for NSI include e-commerce, healthtech, fintech, edutech, consumer applications, cloud-based solutions and smart hardware. NSI is currently investing out of its second fund and has made four investments from its second fund to date.
Across its first and second fund, NSI has invested in 19 companies, including Gojek, CXA Group, FinAccel, Topica, HaloDoc, Chope and Biofourmis.
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