Marketplace app and retail analytics firm, Mallzee, has raised a further £1.9 million taking total funding to £5 million.
This latest round will support accelerated sales of its unique data insights offering, Product Future aimed at improving retailer margins.
The new funding came from existing investors, including SIB and Par Equity and new investors Equity Gap and London Scottish Investment Group and coincides with the appointment of retail expert Peter Robinson to the company’s board.
The team are now focussed on using the unique consumer preference data generated in app to help retailers survive the retail apocalypse currently facing them. New product failure is an issue that is estimated to cost retailers billions every year. In the three months leading up to Christmas 2017, traditionally their strongest trading quarter of the year, this problem was clear to see with over 50% of all fashion products ending up on clearance rails.*
Mallzee’s Product Future solution helps tackle this problem enabling brands and retailers to test and analyse product sales potential before any orders are placed by showcasing and capturing feedback through the app’s Tinder style interface. Using this data in collaboration with companies’ merchandising and buying teams, can result in an improvement of between 6 and 10% in new product success rates, the difference between a profit or loss for many retailers.
Since launch, the Mallzee app has won a range of awards, racked up over 1.4 million downloads and has seen over 150 companies list on the Mallzee platform, driving over 25 million visits to partner sites.
Peter Robinson has over 35 years’ experience with particular expertise in multi-channel and digital commerce. His previous roles include; eight years as Executive Head of E-commerce at Marks & Spencer where he pioneered the early development, introduction and rapid scaling of their highly successful E-commerce offering, and Multi-Channel Director at Selfridges & Co where he led the launch of Selfridges Online, transforming the company into a multi channel retailer.
Peter Robinson, Non-Executive Director, Mallzee said: “I’m very pleased to have joined the board of Mallzee having been impressed with the way the business has developed and pushed M-commerce and Retail Analytics boundaries over the last few years. The team have a real can-do attitude and I’m delighted to work with them to build their retail insights capabilities as I believe that Product Future can fundamentally help the fortunes of many retailers.”
Cally Russell, founder and CEO of Mallzee said; “Mallzee delivers a great shopping experience for consumers and through this we’ve driven significant value for our retail partners. We quickly realised there was a major opportunity for us to utilise our engaged audience as a testing zone for these partners’ new products helping buying and merchandising teams make informed stock decisions based on real data, to improve sell through success. The results have been amazing and the interest we’ve had speaks for itself – we’ve seen more companies test products last quarter than in the rest of 2017 combined.”
Kerry Sharp Director of SIB said: “Having invested in Mallzee since 2014, it is great to see the Company continue to innovate and we are delighted to introduce Peter, a very experienced retail executive, to support the team deliver its global ambitions”.
