Julie Donders
3x Big news from Crowdy House ($600k investment, new identity & more)
We just received an incredible amount of good news from our Rockstart Accelerator 2014 alumnus Crowdy House. Not only did they just announce $600k in seed investment from a group of international angel marketplace investors, they also launched an amazing new website and broke the news that they will be the exclusive online shop and retail point during Milan Design Week 2015 (which makes some of our designer hearts beat faster too). We are proud and excited to tell you all about it below.
Crowdy House has been described as ‘the premiere (launch) platform and marketplace for the world’s best designers and makers’. The platform enables over 500 product designers and makers from 30+ countries to sell their designs and products directly to consumers worldwide.
Announcement 1: $600k investment raised
Over the past couple of months, a $600k seed round investment was raised from a group of marketplace angel investors, including Jesper Buch (JustEat) and Arthur Kosten (Booking.com). Their reasons to invest?
“I think Crowdy House and the people behind it can become number one in their sector. In this space you need to be on top of trends and Crowdy House has what it takes.”- Jesper Buch (JustEat)
“Crowdy House has great traction in one well defined vertical. The passion of the team, their relationships with the designers and the understanding of the market was why I invested.”- Arthur Kosten (Booking.com)
The platform also has backing from influencers in the design industry, such as FRAME Magazine and ELLE Decoration. Last November, Crowdy House won the Accenture Innovation Award for (e)Retail in 2014.
“As an advocate of design, I believe the services that CROWDY HOUSE offers are very relevant right now for designers all over the world. For this reason I support their mission and team.”- Robert Thiemann, owner of FRAME Magazine
“CROWDY HOUSE is not only a fantastic showcase for designers, it also opens the door for design enthusiasts with a modest budget.”- Edine Russel, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE Decoration NL
The investment funding will be used for further development of the platform, offering photography as a service, building a technology team in Bucharest and expanding their marketing and operations team in Amsterdam
Crowdy House designer Sjoerd Jonkers at work
Announcement 2: New website!
Crowdyhouse also just launched their new website, introducing a great new identity, optimized user experience and tools to allow designers to effectively run their sales campaigns. Customers user experience has developed through navigational recommendation and the addition of search. Designer tools include the dashboard development to enable traffic view of both product and store and management tools to facilitate promotion of design and sharing options. Additionally Crowdy House offers PR services to the designers when launching their designs.
“We believe by providing one marketplace, where the best designers can be found and bought from by design fans all over the world, strengthens together the message of the designer and maker movement.”- Mark Studholme and Suzan Claesen, founders Crowdy House.
Mark Studholme, co-founder Crowdy House
Announcement 3: Exclusive retail point (on- and offline) Milan Design Week 2015
For the first time during Milan Design Week 2015 there will be one online retailer for all the designers exhibiting at the event Ventura Lambrate. CROWDY HOUSE has partnered with Ventura Lambrate to provide the first exclusive online shop and offline retail point in Milan during the event. During the week Crowdy House designers will exhibit a collection of designs and there will be live demonstrations of designers at work. Read the press release about this partnership here.
Online shop Crowdy House Milan Design Week 2015
Growth & market potential
The platform is entering a fast growing market: homeware sales globally exceed 400 billion dollars, but only 3-4 percent are made online. Euromonitor forecasts global e-commerce sales online in homeware will grow almost 10 percent a year to $24 billion by 2015 from $20 billion in 2013. Since November 2014 Crowdy House’s gross monthly sales have grown an average of 40%+ per month and the amount of products added by 30%+ per month.
An example premiere (launch) product on Crowdy House is the Elkebana. Designers Fabio Milito and Paula Studio launched the Elkebana exclusively on Crowdy House to collect orders before they started production. Through using the tools and services Crowdy House provides, the campaign received over 1.1 Million views via 45+ article features and went viral on sites such as Inhabitat and BoredPanda.
Elkebana- “The first wall trophy suitable for vegans”
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