E-commerce companies have been the focus of much of the technology attention lately, driven in part by brick-and-mortar stores having to close for some time during the global Pandemic. Swiftly, a retail technology company, wants to give retailers a chance to capture similar customer experiences, loyalty and digital advertising dollars.
Henry Kim was focused on helping grocery chains go digital, a slice of the market that accounted for 9.5% of total U.S. grocery sales. The company had just announced a deal with Dollar Tree and had raised fifteen million dollars.
Over the past 20 years, a disproportionate share of the venture capital dollars went to e-commerce businesses, while comparatively few venture dollars were invested in tools to help brick-and-mortar retailers.
Kim says Swiftlydemocratizes the technology lead enjoyed by Amazon and Walmart to the rest of the industry, like mobile technology capabilities to engage shoppers digitally and make shopping in-store as easy as online.
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The company has doubled in size since its seed round with a focus on hiring in engineering, product, sales and marketing. The leadership team included a CFO, a vice president of business development and a CRO.
Swiftly is being used by hundreds of consumer brands in nearly 10,000 store locations, which accounts for more than $30 billion in gross merchandise volume.
The company received a $100 million Series B led by Wormhole Capital to give it $120 million in total funding. Sand Hill Angels, The Martin Family, and Western Technology Investment were also involved in the round. Kim didn't reveal Swiftly's valuation.
Kim says that this raise is part of the plan and will set Swiftly up for the next level of scale as we deploy across the next million retail stores across the world.
In addition to making investments in engineering, sales and marketing, and technology infrastructure, the new capital will be used to expand into new sectors outside of grocery retail, for example, beauty, home improvement and sporting goods.
The app is swift. Swiftly is the image credit.
Kim says the future of e- commerce will be who owns the customer.
Traditional retailers can use digital tools for recapturing customers faster than Amazon can build grocery stores, something the company already tried to do with bookstores, but decided last week to close them.
Swiftly's position is being taken by other startups who are betting that in-store will continue to dominate as investors come along for the ride. Digital experiences are being developed for convenience stores.
In the next two years, you're going to see brick-and-mortar retailers leverage their advantages like the convenience of their store locations, the fact that most grocery products are cheaper when purchased in the store rather than online and the personalization opportunities afforded.
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