Digital brand company Perch raises $775M to expand globally

Dive Brief:

As the market for scaling digital brands heats up, Perch, a digital commerce company that acquires and grows Amazon third-party and other direct-to-consumer brands, has raised $775 million. The Series A funding round included participation from the SoftBank Vision Fund, Spark Capital and Victory Park Capital, the company announced on Wednesday.
Since its founding in November 2019, the company has acquired more than 70 brands and has multiple deals underway. Some of the brands it purchased have been sold through brick-and-mortar retailers like Target, Walmart, Costco and Kroger, the company said.
With the Series A funding, Perch has raised more than $900 million in funding to date, and has a 10-figure valuation.

Dive Insight:

With the growth of e-commerce, companies focused on acquiring and scaling marketplace-native and DTC brands are also growing.

Chris Bell, CEO of Perch, said in the announcement that the company plans to use the additional funding to "invest in the team and platform, drive additional brand upside through additional channels and geographies and continue to acquire the best products and brands."

The company said that the brands it has acquired saw an average of 75% year-over-year growth in Q1. More than 35% of its portfolio sells to customers in the European Union and other international markets, and the company has plans to continue the global expansion of its brands in the future.

Online marketplaces, and the companies scaling DTC brands and sellers, have gotten a boost amid the rise of online shopping. Amazon reported a 44% increase in online store sales in Q1, while platforms looking to help scale digital brands have raked in funding. DTC marketplace The Fascination raised $1 million in seed funding last week, and Heyday, a platform that seeks to grow marketplace brands, raised $70 million in Series B funding.

Perch and Heyday are not the only companies raising capital to scale Amazon third-party sellers. According to a report from Marketplace Pulse, companies looking to acquire Amazon-based brands had raised $971.5 million by December 2020, up from $108 million in April.

"As one of the largest investors in e-commerce platforms globally, we understand the critical role third-party sellers perform in driving Amazon's marketplace growth," Lydia Jett, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said in a statement. "Through its unique technology platform, Perch is providing third-party sellers with the resources to help scale and manage their businesses."