Just about everybody has bought something online that they've had to return because it wasn't right.
Chicago startup The Desire Co. wants to make that experience a thing of the past, and completed a new funding round this week to expand its expertise.
While the amount of the Series B was not disclosed, CEO Eric Sheinkop said the company has raised just over $20 million to date, and its latest round values the content and media platform at $97 million.
The funding was led by Cleveland Avenue LLC and supported by Valor Siren Ventures.
Co-founded by husband-and-wife Eric and Judith Sheinkop, The Desire Co. aims to help brands and retailers incorporate expert product education into the shopper experience by providing information like whom a product is made for and how to use it so consumers can make informed purchases.
"It wasn't until the height of the pandemic that we realized this was a B2B solution," Sheinkop told Chicago Inno. "People were shopping more than ever from home and they needed credible reviews. What we bring is what was missing in a mixture of the physical brick-and-mortar and the online. When you're shopping online, you have all these third-party opinions about the product that you have to search for but you can't touch the product."
Sheinkop says that The Desire Co. helps bring the in-store shopping experience "to life" for consumers.
"We have an expert describing everything about it so it's as close to the experience of being able to touch, feel, smell the product itself," he said. "What we solve is we put that third-party expertise directly on the retailer's websites to give shoppers all the information they need to make confident purchasing decisions."
The Desire Co. has a network of experts that cover 114 verticals, including technology, kitchen appliances, cosmetics and baby products, and will use the new funding to build out its team of experts and expand its content production capabilities.
Landing Series B funding in tough environment
The Desire Co. raised an $8 million Series A round at the end of 2021 that was also backed by Cleveland Avenue and Valor Siren Ventures. The company's valuation at the time was $70 million.
Sheinkop said that this round felt a little different from that one, when startup fundraising was at an all-time high, but he was able to lean on past performance and previous investors when building the "atypical, strong up-round."
"We didn't go out for new investors," he told Chicago Inno. "The area we are focused in is the fastest-growing in advertising and retail, and [our current investors] came to us and said we should do another raise soon to handle the demand we're seeing. We didn't even go out with the pitch deck."
With a portfolio of more than 80 brands, The Desire Co. has seen a conversion increase boost of 12 times, a 62% increase in time on-site and 25% growth in average order size. Sheinkop said that without these results, the fundraising wouldn't have come as easy.
"People want to fund things they know work, especially in this environment," he said.
