150 million US dollars for Branded

The start-up buys up Amazon stores and is now venturing out of cover. This gives the US company Thrasio another competitor.

The Berlin-based e-commerce start-up Branded has raised 150 million dollars in a financing round. The lead investor is also the co-founder of Branded Ben Kaminski with his venture capital fund Target Global. Other investors include the investment companies Declaration Partners, Tiger Global, Kreos Capital, Lurra Capital, Regah Ventures, Kima Ventures and Vine Ventures. Mark Pincus, founder of the games company Zynga, Jon Oringer, founder of the photo agency Shutterstock, and the co-founder of Lazada Maximilian Bittner are also involved.

Branded was only founded last year. Branded buys Amazon stores and trims them for profit. The company's portfolio already includes more than 25 brands and the start-up claims to have already generated a turnover of 150 million dollars. The goals are ambitious: "Our global presence, our team's experience in scale-ups, our excellent access to investment capital and our ability to build the best proprietary processes and business intelligence put us in a unique position to grow the best brands exponentially," says CEO Pierre Poignant in a company press release. Poignant has already built an e-commerce platform in Asia with Lazada. In 2017, Alibaba bought the Lazada platform for three billion US dollars. Will he achieve similar success with Branded?

Branded is modeled on the US start-up Thrasio, which has bought up and operates more than 100 Amazon stores. Founded in 2018, it became a unicorn last summer and is now worth more than one billion US dollars. According to its own figures, Thrasio generates a turnover of 400 million US dollars.