Two-year-old digital fashion startup Grana got a big boost this week in the form of $10 million in new funding in a round led by Alibaba’s Entrepreneurs Fund.
Based in Hong Kong, the funding comes during a Series A round and follows $6 million in seed funds last year — existing investors Golden Gate Ventures and MindWorks Ventures were also part of the round.
Co-founder and CEO Luke Grana says the new round of funding will mostly go toward expanding the firm’s product line — and increasing the reach of the brand beyond the 12 countries to which they currently ship. The U.S. and expansion there is particularly desirable as the States are already the fashion retailer’s largest market — alongside Hong Kong, just ahead of Australia and Singapore.
“We’ve experienced really strong growth [and had a] good couple of years that we need to continue,” Grana, who was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, said.
Grana sells its own brand of fashion items exclusively through its website and specializes in high-quality fashion products.
“There are no distributors, middle men or warehouses, so we ship direct to the customer. We cut out all the inefficiencies that we can [so that] customers get a really great product at a quality that they’ve never seen before,” he said.
Further, Grana’s founder has noted, Hong Kong’s status as the world’s largest air cargo hub makes next-day/two-day delivery service to the U.S. and other countries on par with any local services and means thus far Grana hasn’t had to open a warehouse in the U.S. or other places to store product locally.
“We travel the world to find the best fabric to make modern wardrobe essentials: great quality items that a large market can wear,” Grana added. “We want to replicate ASOS, but using our own brand.”
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