E-commerce platform Plum completed a follow-on Series B fundraising on Thursday.
The follow-on funding totalled around $20 million and was led by Japanese information platform Recruit Holdings. Existing investors including Matrix Partners China, Qiming Venture Partners and Unity Ventures all participated.
The follow-on Series B funding comes a year after the Beijing-based company's previous round. Plum raised more than $10 million Series B funding in August 2018, led by Matrix Partners China along with IDG Capital and Qiming.
Plum is a platform which sells second hand luxury products, predominantly shoes, bags and clothes. The platform was launched in 2017. It offers a pricing service for people who want to sell their unused luxury products and then sells them online.
The Chinese love luxury goods. Last year, China consumed one-third of the world’s high-end products, according to a McKinsey report. And by 2025, almost two-thirds of the sales growth of luxury products will come from China.
E-commerce giants are responding to this demand. Earlier this year, JD.com merged its own luxury platform with London-based online luxury fashion retail platform Farfetch. This was a second move to boost its luxury business after JD.com became a major shareholder in the platform in 2017 with an investment of $397 million.
It is people in their 20s and 30s who mostly purchase luxuries in China and, because of the influence of social media, about 60% of them will make a purchasing decision in less than a week. To capture this momentum, Plum began to live stream on social media in May.
Over the past six months, Plum’s user numbers and gross merchandise volume has grown five times, according founder Xu Wei. Proceeds from this round of funding will be used to upgrade the company's service and to provide unique luxury items on the platform.
