Resale platform StockX raises $110 million in funding

By

Olivier Guyot

Published
Jun 27, 2019

Just as the popularity of online resale platforms began to pick up speed, StockX, a site offering sneakers, as well as watches and streetwear pieces, was founded in 2016. Three years later, the platform's co-founder Josh Luber was passing through Paris and confided to FashionNetwork.com that the platform's model has the potential to redefine the way in which product prices are set by brands. 

The site's model certainly seems to have appealed to a number of investors. At the end of 2018, the company received $44 million from GV, Google's venture capital investment platform, and Battery Ventures. Less than a year later, StockX has completed a Series C funding round worth $110 million, a cash injection which brings the young company's total valuation up to over $1 billion.

Former SVP of Ebay's Americas region, Scott Cutler, has also become the platform's new CEO, succeeding co-founder Josh Luber, who will remain at the company as a member of the board of directors. 

The resale segment has a promising future, as shown by Farfetch's recent acquisition of Stadium Ventures (a company which had previously attracted investments from LVMH Ventures) for $250 million in 2018. 

What differentiates StockX – founded by Dan Gilbert, the billionaire behind the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA franchise, along with Greg Schwartz and Josh Luber – from other resale platforms is its core concept, which has won over not only GV but also rapper Eminem and Mark Wahlberg, who have both invested in the startup. The company specialises in data, combining an Ebay-like resale site concept with a system which analyses each listing to set a value for each product in accordance with its sale and purchase price across the platform. 

The site quickly made a name for itself among sneakerheads, who were attracted by its wide offering, including both big-name brands and more niche labels, such as BAPE, Supreme, Kith and Palace. The platform claims to have hosted over $1 billion of transactions (gross merchantable volume) in the space of three years. 

StockX's latest funding round was led by new investor DST Global, the fund run by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, whose other investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Spotify, Twitter and Flipkart. Other major newcomers to the company's capital include General Atlantic, an investment firm founded in 1980, which has previously invested in France's Sézane and Doctolib, and GGV Capital, a Beijing-based risk capital company which manages 6.2 billion assets and has previously invested in Airbnb, Grab and Niu. 

"GGV Capital has long seen the value of investing in e-commerce disruptors and StockX is no exception. It is more than a marketplace; the platform's unique model is truly changing the way consumers engage in the purchasing process and has global growth potential," commented GGV Managing Partner Hans Tung in a statement. 

"StockX has already seen incredible growth internationally but what we are most excited about is the opportunity to continue to scale the company globally and provide unprecedented access to consumer goods for users across the world," continued Tung, who will also be joining StockX's board of directors. 

StockX is planning to use the $110 million raised in its Series C funding round to expand its model into Europe, as well as China and Japan, later this year.