German venture capital firm Target Global announced that it has co-founded Branded, a consumer products firm focused on acquiring and scaling Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) companies.
Target Global co-founded Branded with Pierre Poignant, a co-founder of Asian eCommerce giant Lazada, and Michael Ronen, a former managing partner of the SoftBank Vision Fund. Target Global Partner Ben Kaminski is chairman of Branded.
Investors in the new firm include Declaration Partners, Tiger Global, Kreos Capital, Lurra Capital, Regah Ventures, Kima Ventures and Vine Ventures, along with Zynga Founder Mark Pincus and Shutterstock Founder Jon Oringer. The firm has raised over $150 million to date.
Branded said that over the past six months it has “established the structure to thrive in the new retail paradigm, where online convenience and social proof in the form of customer reviews are the ultimate drivers of customer purchase behavior.” The firm said it has already reached $150 million in gross revenue and is now one of the top 0.01 percent sellers on the Amazon platform. Branded said it has opened offices in North American, Europe and Asia, and has hired executives from Alibaba, Lazada, Amazon, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.
According to Branded, the company was founded in response to three key online trends: a consumer shift to online buying, hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic; the perceived value of customer ratings and reviews by shoppers; and the opportunity for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to thrive in an increasingly digital environment.
Amazon sales have been on fire in recent months, fueled in part by surging consumer demand for online shopping due to the ongoing pandemic. The 2020 holiday season was especially lucrative for the eCommerce giant’s merchants: According to Amazon, participating merchants sold over $4.8 billion in merchandise from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, a 60 percent jump over 2019 sales.
Branded isn’t alone in seeking out to scale thriving Amazon businesses. Thrasio has also been focused on buying and optimizing Amazon merchants. The company announced in July that it had raised $260 million in a Series C round led by Advent International, which was raised against a $1 billion valuation. As of August, Thrasio had acquired more than 50 Amazon businesses and was considered one of the top 25 sellers on the platform, with pro-forma revenues of over $300 million.
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