Secretsales.com receives multi-million pound investment
25 August 2010 09:42
Secretsales.com has received its second multi-million pound investment from Brands4Friends, Germany's largest private shopping club. The private sale online retailer also announced the appointment of John McKenzie from Brand Alley UK's senior team as associate buying director.
Speaking to FashionUnited, chief executive officer Nish Kudadia said: "We reached our milestone targets for the first six months and the investors are supporting our continued acceleration with a second significant round of funding. As a management/founder team we've been bootstrapped operators since day one, which has meant our thought process with running the business is grounded in a different way to some seed funded start-ups. We continue to run the business prudently, which doesn't mean we get everything right all the time rather we manage our risks with a serious degree of care. At the same time our investor company, Brands4Friends.de, has some ambitious international aspirations and the UK is an important part of that picture."
Brands4Friends, which reported annual revenues of Eu80 million for its German business last year, first invested in Secretsales.com in February this year and decided to increase its stake due to impressive growth - the retailer has seen a doubling of visitors since investment in February, attracting over one million users per month.
Mr McKenzie's appointment marks a significant move for the retailer as it continues to boost its buying team, which already includes Marco Polo as sales director; Steven Kelly as senior buyer, Fenwicks buyer Natalie Holder overseeing the lingerie buying portfolio and Harvey Nichols's senior buyer Melanie Smallwood leading womenswear.
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