It seems that wherever you look on the internet today, eCommerce is everywhere – and that’s because it is.
eCommerce was booming before 2020 when many people were stuck at home and had to turn to the online world to do most – or all – of their shopping.
As a result, the market has erupted beyond all prior predictions.
Here are just a small selection of eCommerce startup stores, platforms and services that are disrupting their markets.
1stDibs
1stDibs is an eCommerce platform that offers a marketplace for rare and desirable objects in furniture, fashion, fine art, and jewellery. It features an online platform that connects respected dealers and makers with sophisticated collectors who share in the pursuit of beautiful designs. It is the world’s leading marketplace for extraordinary design. By bringing together many of the best sellers and makers in vintage, antique and contemporary furniture, home decor, fine jewellery, watches, art and fashion from more than 600 cities around the globe, 1stDibs offers a curated inventory that is not available anywhere else.
Laurence Forcione, Michael Bruno
Total funding: $253m
Bellroy
Bellroy have grown steadily from their early days in 2010 – they exist to bring slim wallets to market that still carry everything that you need. Over the years the product range has expanded to today, where their range includes bags, mobile phone cases and other accessories. All made from highest quality materials and all designed perfectly.
Bloom & Wild
A letterbox flower delivery business, Bloom & Wild offer a range of flowers and bouquets, all packaged to fit through a standard letterbox. They also sell a range of houseplants, chocolates, vases and candles. Leveraging the advantages of latest tech and predictive analytics , they aim to deliver faster and fresher, and plan to become the pan-European market leader in flower and gift delivery.
Aron Gelbard, Ben Stanway
Total funding: £96.3m
Brandless
Offering a wide range of home, beauty and wellness products, Brandless aims to offer a low-cost shopping experience matched with quality products that are good for the consumer and the environment. Their stated mission is ‘…rooted in quality, transparency, and community-driven values. We believe that you should never have to choose between what’s good for you (not to mention your family and the planet) and what’s good for your wallet. You with us? We think you’re going to love it!’
Ido Leffler, Tina Sharkey
Total funding: $292.5m
Boxed
Boxed is a big box club shopping experience (bulk buying) brought to an eCommerce platform. It is wholesale shopping for consumers with the simplicity and convenience of a mobile app. Serving customers in the USA, it offers online shopping and 2 day delivery for a wide range of everyday shopping supplies.
Chieh Huang, Christopher Cheung, Jared Yaman, William Fong
Total funding: $243.6m
Deliverr
Deliverr provides shipping services to eCommerce companies. They offer fast delivery and fixed pricing – ‘All-inclusive, Amazon-like pricing with no long term contracts or hidden fees’ as they say on their webpage, which allows eCommerce retailers to offer free, 2-day delivery. Their tech platform allows for integration with a large number of eCommerce platforms, making sign-up and service simple for its customers.
Harish Abbott, Michael Krakaris
Total funding: $240.9m
Depop
Depop is the fashion marketplace where the next generation buy, sell and get inspired. It was founded by the co-founder of Pig magazine and RetroSuperfuture sunglasses, Simon Beckerman. It quickly evolved into an app fashion marketplace powerhouse, for users to trade new, used, vintage and modern clothing and accessories that may well not be found anywhere else! Depop now has over 200 employees worldwide and over 15 million users.
Farfetch
Operating a purpose-built end-to-end tech platform, Farfetch runs an eCommerce website that brings together a variety of independent fashion boutiques, offering a wide, curated range of fashion clothing, jewellery and accessories. Mixing established brands with new designers, they offer a continuous supply of fresh ideas and striking items to their customers, delivering to over 190 countries.
HelloFresh
A food subscription service, HelloFresh make weekly deliveries to their customers with food parcels of pre-portioned ingredients. Complete with instructions, this makes it easy for the customer to then cook a fresh, home-cooked meal for their family without waste – and saving time, as there is not weighing out of ingredients first. No meal planning, no shopping – just simple convenience and a healthy, nutritionally balanced fresh meal for the customer.
Bryan Ciambella, Dominik Richter, Luca Ranaldi, Thomas Griesel
Total funding: $367.5m
Hero
Hero is an eCommerce sales platform with a difference – providing businesses a platform for one-to-many video sales as well as one-to-one virtual shopping. Their technology makes it easy to text or video call with customers which they describe as eCommerce made human. It gives retailers the opportunity for their customers to contact and shop via phone or app, whenever it suits them. Hero could just be the ideal shopping experience platform for 2021.
Hungry Panda
HungryPanda is a specialist food delivery platform to providing authentic Chinese food and groceries to Chinese compatriots and students abroad since its establishment in 2016. Their success is built upon a large vertical with specialised needs and underpinned by its industry-leading operational efficiency and proprietary technology. For HungryPanda, customers are always at the centre of its business and the company is committed to offering one-stop-shop solutions for overseas Chinese. The interface design of the HungryPanda APP is highly in line with end users’ preferences and it has built an efficient distribution system in order to create an advanced food and retail ecosystem.
The Hut Group
Launched as a white label eCommerce provider, The Hut Group has grown from strength to strength and is now, in their own words, become a globally renowned end-to-end tech platform specialising in taking brands direct to consumers worldwide, powered by THG Ingenuity. THG has acquired several well-known brands over the years, and now operates over 100 high-profit websites that sell premium, non-perishable FMCG direct to consumers, focussing mainly on the global Health and Beauty markets.
Impossible Foods
Since 2011, Impossible Foods have been working to make meat from plants. They are developing plant-based substitutes for meat, dairy, and fish products. Impossible Foods select specific proteins and nutrients from greens, seeds, and grains to recreate the experience of meats and dairy products. They aim to create food people love and save the planet at the same time. They sell through retailers/restaurants but also have a strong direct-to-customer trade through their eCommerce website.
Monte Casino, Patrick Brown
Total funding: $1.4b
Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout is an all-in-one platform for finding, launching, and selling products on Amazon. Founded in 2015 as the first Amazon product research tool, Jungle Scout today features business management solutions and market intelligence resources to help entrepreneurs and brands manage their eCommerce businesses.
Klarna
Klarna is an eCommerce payment solution that enables merchants to offer their customers staggered payments when shopping online, split into 3 monthly payments. For any merchant that works with Klarna, it will be an option as a payment method on their checkout page. The customer makes the first payment at purchase, and then Klarna handles the other two subsequent payments automatically via direct debit. A boost for business and a powerful purchasing tool for consumers.
Niklas Adalberth, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Victor Jacobsson
Total funding: $3.1b
Lookiero
Lookerio is a personal shopper service for women. Each month they will send 5 items of clothing, fashion and accessories to your home; you simply keep and pay for any you like and return the rest, post-paid. They cater for a range of budgets and do not charge for the service if you keep one or more of the items (there is a nominal fee if you don’t).
Made
Made is an online eCommerce site making high-end designer furniture accessible to everyone, by linking consumers directly with designers. They are an entirely online retailer – no bricks and mortar premises (not even a warehouse). And sustainability is at the heart of everything they do.
Brent Hoberman, Chloe Macintosh, Julien Callede, Ning Li
Total funding: $136.9m
Papier
Papier started with beautifully designed and personalised greeting cards and stationery, with an aim to inspire people to connect with each other more often and in more meaningful ways. Since then, they have added to their range with wedding invitations, birth announcements, family photo albums and several other items, all created around beautifully designed paper.
Rent the Runway
Rent the Runway is an eCommerce apparel rental firm. They are disrupting the fashion industry by giving women the opportunity to rent designer clothing and accessories. Their bespoke tech platform – the closet in the cloud – allows them to offer one-off rentals as well as a subscription membership; although a rental business, what they are really doing is selling fashion freedom and flexibility – with sustainability built-in.
Jennifer Fleiss, Jennifer Hyman, Jenny Fleiss
Total funding: £541.2m
Simba Sleep
Simba is a direct-to-consumer mattress manufacturer, who leverage the power of eCommerce to reach their customers. It’s not just about the product, it’s about how it’s delivered; they have a fast turnaround with door-to-door delivery. And they offer a 200-night trial for customers to decide if they like the product!
James Cox, Steve Reid
Total funding: £107.1m
SilkFred
SilkFred is a luxury retail platform that helps independent brands and emerging designers get their products to market. On SilkFred you can browse the boutiques of the fashion industry’s rising stars and shop their unique collections, all hand-selected. Silkfred describes themselves as “…the eagle eye on emerging trends and the best up and coming fashion designers.”
Emma Watkinson, Kate Jackson, Stephen Jackson
Total funding: £145.6k
Trove
Trove works with leading brands to develop white-label channels, increasing their sales and helping the planet by advancing the circular economy. Their technology allows brands to take control of their resale marketplaces, deepening customer loyalty and generating new profits. The company provides white-label technology and end-to-end operations that power circular shopping for premium and luxury brands.
Urban
Urban runs a wellness platform that allows consumers to book treatments such as massage, personal training, osteopathy and beauty sessions online, for at-home or online sessions. They connect pre-vetted professionals with individual customers and now offer over 50 different treatments.
Giles Williams, Jack Tang
Total funding: £35.7m
WorldRemit
Helping eCommerce companies do business – WorldRemit offer online money transfers in 90 currencies and sending to 150 countries (usually within minutes), and now have over 4 million customers.
They allow you to send money from several sources, via a mobile app and arrange for delivery to be by bank transfer, cash pickup or in several other ways, such as mobile money transfer.
Catherine Wines, Ismail Ahmed, Richard Igoe
Total funding: £407.7m
Dollar Shave Club, by Unilever
And finally – no list of successful eCommerce startups would be complete without a mention of the Dollar Shave Club (now acquired by Unilever). Begun in 2012, it has gone from strength to strength, but their breakthrough moment was their initial (and world-famous) viral video advert – now watched over 27 million times on YouTube (see below). Starting with razors, they now create and sell a range of personal care products.
Mark Levine, Michael Ryan Dublin
Total funding: £163.5m
And as an argument for what an amazing video can do for your business, there is perhaps no finer example than this. The following video launched the business and, despite crashed servers in the first 24 hours due to the viral effect, had been watched by over 3 million people in the first few days after launch.
If you want to learn more about what a difference a single video can make to your business – talk to us at Splento.com to discover more.
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The list above includes startups whose aim is to help improve – and even disrupt – eCommerce industries.
Likewise, Splento is helping to improve business – by creating visual content, tools and resources to aid marketing, attract new clients, highlight USPs, promote other advantages and much more…
As part of that, here is our free webinar on video content and how it can help your business – today.
For all your visual content you can record your videos yourself, or if you prefer – contact Splento for help.
We are experts in visual content – we make videos that make your business grow.
Contact Splento today:
Data source: crunchbase.com