Following Chinese online dress rental platform MSParis US$18 million funding led by Northern Light Venture, Chengdu-based women’s clothes rental platform Dora’s Dream has also closed a Legend Capital-led US$12 million series A+ round which was also participated by Shanghai-based apparel maker La Chapelle Fashion.
Commenting on the investment, Jin Weiji, a partner at Legend said, “The Chinese consumer sector is entering a ‘sharing era.’ The sharing economy now exists across our daily lives, including transport, hotels, and fashion. Dora’s Dream provides young ladies with a fashion sharing platform that is innovative and follows the trend of consumer upgrade.”
He further notes that Legend has also investments in other shared-economy companies, including China Auto Rental Holdings Inc., as well as Uoko and Xiaozhu in the home accommodation sector.
Founded in 2015, Dora’s Dream provides daily clothes for young women in tier-two and tier-three cities, providing them a subscription rental solution to solve their needs for fashion brands, whereby they can rent fashion brands instead of purchasing and having it cluster at their wardrobes.
The platform currently provides its users with more than 16 combinations of membership selections whereby users can choose from time-lapse categories of 1, 3, 6, and 12 months paired with the maximum number of clothing piece from 1, 3, 6, and 9 which will vary from a price range between RMB 99 and RMB 8064.
At present, Dora’s Dream wardrobe of shared clothing has a stock keeping unit (SKU) reaching 500,000 in addition to partnerships with multiple brands and more than 100 designers. The startup also claims that since September, the annual membership system has seen more than 1/3 of users selecting the more than 1-month subscription service.
Dora’s Dream also asserts that from March 2016 to the end of 2016, the platform has more than 60,000 paying customers in addition to 500,000 registered users, mainly from Sichuan, Guangdong, and Zhejiang.
With the latest capital, Dora’s Dream will use the capital to further enhance its flexibility of supply chain in order to solve the clothing turnover rate and virality as well as to introduce new brands to achieve the diversification of platform clothing and to increase platform’s brand awareness and confidence.
In China, the sharing-leasing of fast fashion clothing is a market with great potential as speaking on the investment, La Chapelle‘s CEO Wang Yong said, “Investing in Dora’s Dream is because we have developed a liking for their subscription model, as well as their production chain from washing to quality inspection to delivery, which forms a closed operation model.”
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
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