Material Wrld raised $9 million in Series B

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Mar 30, 2016

Luxury fashion trade-in service, Material Wrld announced Wednesday the closing of its Series B funding round. The company raised $9 million with investments from Start Today Inc. and VC Nissay Capital. Start Today contributed $7 million and VC Nissay Capital added $2 million. To date, the company has raised $13 million, including $780K in seed funding from Great Oaks VC, SunBridge Global Ventures and Steven Alan among others.

 
The Brooklyn-based company gives women the ability to exchange designer apparel, handbags and shoes with the help of resale experts. Material Wrld also offers the Material Wrld Fashion Trade-In Card that allows card carriers to shop for new merchandise at Barneys, Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Intermix or any other Material Wrld trade-in network. The Trade-In Card is a reloadable prepaid debit card powered by Discover.
 
Founders, Rie Yano and Jie Zheng launched Material Wrld in 2012 after working with Coach as Manager of the Digital Media Marketing Department and J. Crew as Director of International Marketing, respectively. The Harvard Business School graduates, “set out to create a socially conscious business that would enable women to feel great about their fashion purchases by providing a smarter way to shop and sell,” according to the Material Wrld website.

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In 2014, the duo launched The Wrld, an e-commerce destination that curates and sells gently worn women’s clothing, handbags and shoes from designer brands and offers the trade-in service.
 
Material Wrld sales increased 13x in 2015 and the company plans to grow its team in 2016.