Copious Lands $5 Million in Funding to Expand Online Marketplace
San Francisco–based fashion e-commerce site Copious announced on July 11 that it secured $5 million in a Series A round of funding.
The online shopping site is built around social media and the idea of a “social marketplace.”
Users sign in to Copious with their Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram account to establish online followers and purchase or sell new and used clothing or home and beauty products.
The financing was led by Menlo Park, Calif.–based venture-capital firm Foundation Capital, with Google Ventures and Relay Ventures increasing their original investments and ownership in the company, Copious Chief Executive Jim Rose said. “We really liked our original investors,” he noted.
The company will use the funds to hire more staff and expand into the international marketplace.
Currently, the company employs 12 people and hopes to grow to around 20 employees.
Right now, all of Copious’ sellers and buyers are domestic, and the site can’t process transactions from international users. But the company is working on changing this over the next few months.
“If someone wants to buy from a U.S.-based seller, we want to support that and process that transaction,” Rose explained. “We also want to give ourselves access to those international markets.”
Another part of Copious’ expansion is adding new shopping experiences for smartphones and tablets so that users can list and buy from the device of their choice rather than solely online. “To date, we’ve been doing the majority of our work strictly on the Web,” Rose said.
The site has also landed four new bloggers, adding to the site’s original five. Rose said the company aimed for bloggers with “distinct taste” and “really interesting things” to sell from their closet and who already have a community of readers.
The new batch includes Monica Rose, who is a stylist for the Kardashians; Santa Barbara, Calif.–based blogger Samantha Hutchinson of the blog site Could I Have That?; San Francisco–based fashion blogger Lulu Chang of Lulu and Your Mom; and L.A. blogger Jaclyn Johnson of Some Notes on Napkins.
“We wanted to provide as many different viewpoints as possible,” Rose said. “We tried to get a pretty broad cross section, from new moms to edgy 20-year-olds. The more and different viewpoints we have from tastemakers like these bloggers, the more interesting it makes the marketplace,” Rose said.
The goal with the bloggers is to show first-time sellers how easy online selling can be, Rose said.
“A lot of people from 18 to 40 have never sold online before, and with the help of the bloggers we wanted to show how easy it can be and encourage people to clean out their closets,” he said.—Deidre Crawford
