Ntwrk Secures $50 Million in Funding From Kering, Goldman Sachs
Ntwrk, the mobile-first video commerce marketplace, raised $50 million in funding on Thursday led by Kering and the Growth Equity business at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Additional participants include LionTree Partners and Tenere Capital.
The company rolled out a number of shopping festivals this year, among them Unboxed for collectibles in February and Off Court for basketball in March, in addition to the Transfer festival that debuted in August 2020 and the Beyond the Streets virtual art fair in December 2020.
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The new funding will be used to further define the marketplace’s shopping experience, including livestream commerce which reached $150 billion globally in 2020 and is expected to reach $300 billion in 2021 according to Coresight Research. In the U.S. where livestream shopping is very young, the market is expected to reach $11 billion by the end of 2021 and $25 billion by 2025 also according to Coresight.
“Our vision is to become the biggest, most culturally relevant, livestream shopping marketplace for Gen-Z and Millennial audiences who are obsessed with pop culture,” said Ntwrk CEO Aaron Levant in a statement. “It’s exciting for Ntwrk to have Goldman Sachs and Kering sign on for the future of livestream shopping.”
Grégory Boutté, chief client and digital officer at Kering added, “As part of our innovation strategy, we are taking minority stakes in companies developing disruptive experiences and services for the next generation of luxury consumers. We think that live e-commerce is a way to address this audience, share our Maisons’ unique storytelling, and augment the selling ceremony online.”
Goldman Sachs and Kering both join a number of previous investors including Live Nation, Foot Locker and Main Street Advisors, whose investors include Jimmy Iovine, Drake and LeBron James.
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