It’s a good time to be in digital fashion.
On Friday, fashion discovery platform Moda Operandi announced a $100 million investment from a combination of new and existing investors. The news comes just days after Farfetch reported a $250 million windfall, proving the lure of fashion’s online future.
The decade-old, New York-based firm, which mingles content and commerce to fuel fashion discovery, will leverage the infusion of capital to enhance the data and technology that power its platform, Moda Operandi said. It also plans to continue iterating the user experience and curating an assortment that already includes more than 1,000 global brands and designers across men’s and women’s fashion, home décor, accessories and jewelry. The site gives shoppers access to high-wattage runway designers and brands like Brandon Maxwell and Isabel Marant and emerging talent like Nanushka and Anna Quan.
“For the past nine years, Moda has disrupted the way people shop for luxury fashion,” Moda Operandi CEO Ganesh Srivats said. “This investment will enable us to build on that innovation, investing further in the client and designer experience and connecting more of the world’s best fashion to more people.”
Existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) and the Apax Digital Fund contributed to the combination of new equity and debt financing, in which the Santo Domingo family, Comerica Bank, TriplePoint Capital and others participated.
“We continue to be impressed with the power of Moda’s brand and its positioning in the luxury market. Moda has been enhancing its technology capabilities as a world leading platform for fashion discovery and is led by a world-class team,” said Dan O’Keefe, managing partner of Apax Digital, adding the firm is “impressed with the power of Moda’s brand and its positioning in the luxury market.”
Citing how Moda Operandi has “disrupted the traditional e-commerce model, using technology to give people unprecedented access to fashion,” Tony Florence, general partner and head of technology investing at NEA, said, “It was a really big idea when we led the Series A, and today Ganesh and the team are executing on that data-enabled retail model at scale.”
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Digital’s data-heavy operational approach has forced brick-and-mortars to catch up in hopes of leveling the playing field. Collecting reams of data with each passing second, online players amass troves of information around user behavior and preferences, allowing them to target shoppers with greater precision and personalization versus their physical rivals.
Last spring, Josh Peskowitz, Moda Operandi fashion director, men’s, noted the runway of growth ahead in men’s wear as younger consumers take a greater interest in style and the casualization trend drives new forms of dressing. With inspiration and influences bombarding men from social media, celebrities and more, “our job in retail is to make sure we’re giving them guidance,” he said.
To date, Moda Operandi has raised a total of $345 million in equity capital.