Enjoy — the eCommerce service launched by Ron Johnson, a former executive at Apple and former CEO at J.C. Penney — has secured its next big round of funding.
Now, the company has secured $50 million in equity funding, The Wall Street Journal reported. The investment round was led by Highland Capital Partners and included existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Oak Investment Partners. This is on top of Enjoy’s early funding round of $30 million — bringing its total funding to $80 million.
Enjoy, which launched in early May in the San Francisco Bay area and New York City, acts as a personal commerce platform, “built to revolutionize the way people buy and enjoy the world’s best technology products,” the company explained when it launched. Enjoy’s “experts” will hand-deliver selective high tech products, and aid in setting up the product free of charge.
“Enjoy was founded on the simple premise that people need help and we believe that a human connection is the best way to help them,” Johnson said in May. “With Enjoy, we’re delivering the first personal commerce platform, offering an entirely new way for customers to buy products and for our employees, an entirely new way to work.”
Johnson’s strategy, which was already partly revealed at the end of last year, is to keep a small inventory, instead relying on its partners to supply the devices as needed. The new startup will profit from the difference in wholesale prices it negotiated and what customers pay. The products, which start at a price point of $200, include smartphones, laptops, speakers, tablets, drones, urban bikes with motors and even electric longboards.
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