While ecommerce giant Amazon is building its line of branded products, the third-party sellers are growing even faster as they maintain steady progress. Reportedly, in 2019, sellers on the Amazon marketplace sold $200B (approx €169.67B) worth of products, and as a retailer, Amazon’s sales were $135B (approx €114.55B).
Recently, Heroes, an ecommerce company that focuses on acquiring and scaling high performing Amazon businesses, has raised $65M (approx €55.2M) in a pre-seed round of funding led by Fuel Ventures. According to the investor, this is one of the largest pre-seed rounds in European history.
Reportedly, the round was a mix of equity and debt financing. 360 Capital and Fuel Ventures co-led the round, with participation from Upper90 (an alternative capital provider for ecommerce assets). Besides, angel investors also participated that includes Matt Robinson, (co-founder of GoCardless and Nested), and Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas, (COO of GoCardless).
The raised capital will be used to continue hiring the early team and to support new acquisitions.
About Heroes
UK-based Heroes was co-founded in June 2020 by twin brothers and second-time founders Alessio and Riccardo Bruni. Alessio Bruni (M&A at Perella Weinberg Partners, GM of Luno and VP of Retail at Lazada), and Riccardo Bruni (EQT Ventures, M&A at Merrill Lynch), both bring extensive experience in M&A, investing, ecommerce and marketplaces.
Heroes is a technology-driven ecommerce company that specialises in the acquisition and operation of small and medium-sized Amazon FBA brands mainly operating on one or more European Amazon marketplaces.
Alessio told TechCrunch, “What becomes evident to many founders at this point is that running a >$1M (approx €849K) business on Amazon is no longer a side-hustle. It requires significant resources to be dedicated to administrative tasks, tax filings, accounting, staff management, supply chain, logistics, cash-management, marketing etc. And some of these founders find themselves out of depth to manage such a big undertaking.”
He further adds, “What we love about these brands is that they have already hit product-market fit and we just need to focus on growth.”
Image credit: Heroes