Clique Media Group, an 11-year-old fashion startup that is part media company, part consumer product house, has raised a new round of $15 million.
This Amazon-backed media startup has raised $15 million to make a big bet on commerce
Clique Media Group already sells a fashion line at Target.
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
The series C investment, which was co-led by Greycroft and E.ventures, was an intentionally modest sum for this stage of a company, Clique’s CEO Katherine Power said in an interview.
That’s because Clique has been profitable for three years, and only previously raised around $13 million, including a previous round led by Amazon.
The company runs the media sites Who What Wear, Byrdie and MyDomaine, making a chunk of its revenue from affiliate fees when one of its readers discovers a product and goes on to purchase it on a partnering retail site. Clique also recently unveiled a new shopping app, and has designed and exclusively licensed a line of apparel to Target.
Some of the new money will go toward funding the creation and launch of three additional brands of consumer products — all built on the back of learnings from the way readers interact with its content, both on social media platforms and on its own web properties.
“We look at everything from SEO search trends, to what these women are searching for on our sites, to the sales that we are referring to retailers,” Power said.
For Greycroft Partners, the new round — led by its growth fund — signals a move to double down on Clique Media’s unique mix of content and commerce.
“I really feel like it’s a new kind of company — I know that sounds like a very venture capital thing to say — but Disney started once, Hearst started once,” said Greycroft’s Dana Settle, a board member. “That’s how I think of CMG.”
“They are building a new kind of consumer company,” Settle added, “that takes the data they have from all the interactions they have with their audiences ... and leverages that to develop products that they know their customers want. If you were starting a Disney today, that’s what you would do.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
