Trouva secures £17m investment

Trouva, the online marketplace for independent boutiques, has secured a further £17 million in funding to fuel its international expansion.

The funding round was led by Octopus Ventures, alongside C4 Ventures and Downing Ventures, with BGF and LocalGlobe also participating.

Trouva was founded four years ago by Alex Loizou, Mandeep Singh and Glen Walker and connects consumers with independent boutiques with an emphasis on surfacing hard-to-find items across the fashion and lifestyle space.

For the boutiques it gives them access to a global consumer base they otherwise may not have been able to reach and also to Trouva's proprietary software platform for bricks-and-mortar shops, handling everything from inventory management through to logistics.

The business expanded internationally for the first time in June 2018 with the launch of 20 Berlin boutiques. It has since grown rapidly and now brings together over 200,000 products from more than 800 independents from over 300 towns and cities, including Paris, Lisbon, Rome and Barcelona. Today, 40% of Trouva’s retailer network is made up of bricks-and-mortar shops outside of the UK, across 12 European countries.

As a result of the investment the business is launching in Germany with Trouva.de and has recently expanded its management team with the appointment of Juliet Warkentin, formerly of Amazon Fashion, as Chief Marketing Officer. A year ago it appointed former Uber and Betfair exec, Niall Wass, as Chair.

Mandeep Singh, Co-founder at Trouva, said: “At Trouva, we envision a world where beautiful offline inventory is easily available to all. Over the last 12 months we’ve taken important steps in achieving this by further extending our platform to the greatest independents across Europe and nearly doubling our network of retailers, with top boutiques achieving hundreds of thousands of pounds of sales through Trouva.com.

"We will be using this latest investment to grow international demand and are excited to officially launch in Germany as we start to broaden our customer base and expand into new European markets. As we continue to scale rapidly, we will also continue to build a world-class team with this funding round. We’re thrilled to bring Juliet onboard as CMO with her experience developing and managing high-profile brands.”

Warkentin, whose CV also includes stints with WGSN, Marie Claire and Drapers, added:  “For too long, discovery, inspiration and curation-led categories were missing from the e-commerce landscape. As a result, customers were able to easily access the commodity products they needed online, but often found it difficult to uncover the products they truly wanted. I’m delighted to have joined Trouva in order to bring what we do to as many people around the world as possible, helping them to find more beautiful things, not just more things.”