Swedish fashion e-commerce company NA-KD raises $45M Series B

NA-KD, the Swedish fashion e-commerce company that sells women’s clothes direct to consumers, has raised $45 million in Series B funding. Noteworthy, $5 million of that is secondary investment as some early shareholders, not including the founders or management team, partially cash in.

Leading the round is Partech, with the participation from U.S.-based FJ Labs. Existing backers Northzone, eEquity, Jonas Norlander, and Filip Engelbert also followed on.

Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Jarno Vanhatapio, NA-KD is an online direct-to- consumer (DTC) fashion brand for women, specifically targeting millennials with “stylish yet affordable clothes”. The company’s wares are mainly marketed through social influencers.

After two years, it claims to already be one of the most quoted online fashion brands on Instagram in Sweden and Germany, powered by what NA-KD describes as a “highly scalable fashion collaboration platform with star influencers”. This, says the company, has seen its second full year of operations achieve a revenue run-rate close to $75 million, growing 150-plus percent compared to 2016.

Meanwhile, I’m told the new funding will be used to accelerate the growth of the company as it aims to become a preferred fashion brand for millennials. As part of this, NA-KD plans to launch 9 new localised sites in the coming months. It is also hiring across the company, and developing new collection collaborations with “leading worldwide social influencers”.

“We will continue to invest in growth during 2018, especially targeting the U.S., U.K. and major European markets with nine localised and translated sites and with localised marketing,” says founder Vanhatapio. “Although we significantly improved the bottom-line results during 2017, international growth is still number one, two and three on our priority list for 2018. Our bottom-line results are moving towards profitability exactly as planned”.