In early 2012, rumors flew that Boston-born online streetwear retailer Karmaloop was eyeing an IPO in mid-2013.
Now, nearly two years later, the e-commerce company is out looking to raise a massive round of funding to fuel an international expansion. The round will be worth approximately $30 million.
Selkoe shared in 2012 that the company was beginning the exploratory process for an initial public offering. The company saw $130 million in revenue in 2011, which was an 81 percent increase from 2010, according to the Boston Business Journal. Karmaloop had no signs of slowing down and made aggressive plans for the coming year, planning to pull in over $200 million revenue.
The company raised $19 million in debt financing in September 2012, and stayed fairly quiet until this year.
In mid-February 2014, Karmaloop moved its call center from Boston’s Back Bay to New Jersey, eliminating 30 full-time jobs. At the time, the company stated it had 205 employees in total, with 170 based in Boston, according to the Boston Globe. More recently, eBay Enterprise, an omnichannel solutions provider for ecommerce, retail order management, fulfillment and customer care and marketing, announced on Thursday that it has expanded its partnership with Karmaloop to provide marketing solutions that increase the company's customer conversion.
This upcoming round of financing and global expansion marks a major milestone for Karmaloop. The company began in 1999 out of Selkoe’s parents’ basement; Over the past 15 years, the firm has added ancillary brands like PLNDR and MissKL, and grown into an e-commerce leader in Boston. Along with the debt financing, the company has only raised $35 million in funding from NYC-based Insight Venture Partners – a far smaller sum than the Hub’s other big e-commerce company Wayfair, which has raised $350 million in total and is Boston’s most funded tech firm. (The company is also approaching its IPO and garnered nearly $1 billion in revenue in 2013.)
With Karmaloop's funding and Wayfair's IPO on the way, Boston's e-commerce sector appears to be alive and well.
Stay tuned to BostInno for more on Karmaloop’s financing in the coming weeks.
