Social-commerce fashion app 21Buttons closes $17M Series B to launch the US market

Social-commerce fashion app 21Buttons today announces it has raised $17M Series B funding led by Idinvest Partners, the €8bn pan-European private equity and venture capital investor. The capital will mainly be invested in talent traction for tech and product profiles, and user acquisition.

All existing investors from the company’s $10M Series A Funding in Q3 2017 have followed on, including Kibo Ventures, Breega, Samaipata, JME VC, 360 Capital Partners and Sabadell VC.

The app is about to reach 2M monthly active users (MAUs) and is successfully operating in the UK, Spain, Italy and launched in Germany last month. 21Buttons will be live in the US in the coming months and will subsequently launch other European countries over the course of 2018.

With online fashion buying transforming at an unprecedented speed, especially on the inspirational side of the purchasing path, 21Buttons has an ambitious internationalisation and product roadmap to become a global player in social-commerce fashion discovery.

As highlighted in The 2018 Internet Trends Report, online product-finding is becoming more data driven, personalized and competitive, and social networks are playing a greater role, as inspirational layers enabling more efficient product discovery/commerce. According to

Curalate Consumer Survey 2017, 55% of Americans bought products online after social media discovery. Adobe Digital Insights from May 2018, pointed out that the share of ecommerce referrals raised from 2% in Q1’ 15, to 6% in Q1’ 18.

21Buttons operates at the intersection of social commerce, user-generated content (UGC) and fashion purchasing discovery and inspiration. The Barcelona-based fashion social and shopping network, connects brands, users and influencers through a curated technology that

allows users to easily build the content of the platform by posting pictures of their outfits and tagging their clothes linked to the brand website. Users become influencers themselves, and the platform remunerates those who generate quality UGC that translates into sales. Following

the examples of verticalized UGC mobile platforms such as Houzz (for decoration), Musical.ly (for music) or even LinkedIn (for jobs), 21 Buttons has built the first platform for a complete fashion purchasing experience.

21Buttons was founded in 2015 by Marc Soler and Jaime Farres, former consultants at Mckinsey & Co, who decided to join the wave of Fashion tech. Both of them are in the 30 under 30 Forbes list.