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StockX started as a market for the resale of sports shoes, but has since grown to become much more, bringing its transparent and anonymous market to more verticals. Today, the company is announcing a $ 44 million investment in Series B, which will help drive international and domestic growth while enabling the company to develop even more product categories and perhaps more. 39; open StockX stores.
The idea of driving StockX is simple: provide a market with fair prices and guarantee the authenticity of the goods. The result is close to the almost daily trading of consumer goods in the same vein as the oil futures. In some cases, the seller never touches the product. Sneakers and other products on demand are sold at prices set by the market rather than the seller. If a particular shoe is in demand, the price goes up.
StockX is one of the fastest growing startups in Detroit and Michigan and currently employs 300 people in Detroit and 50 in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 2016 by CEO Josh Luber, Chief Operating Officer Greg Schwartz and Dan Gilbert, founder and president of Quick Loans, the company has grown to see more than $ 2 million in daily transactions and 800,000 users have sold or purchased items on StockX. Today, at an event in Detroit, Luber told the audience that the company was approaching a billion dollars.
The company has never had a mixed capital and CEO and co-founder Josh Luber told TechCrunch that the company never thought of turning to institutional financing. It's the comfort of having a billionaire like Gilbert as a co-founder; Luber said Gilbert was still happy to finance StockX.
"We did not need any money," Luber told TechCrunch the day before the announcement, adding. "It really was about having external people who, in our opinion, added values that were really different from what we had around the table."
At present, the company's main market is focused on sports shoes, but StockX is built around a platform that works for most e-commerce sites. It's a $ 5 billion global market. Last year, the company also launched markets for streetwear, handbags and watches – all high-demand sectors in the secondary market.
Scaling up the service requires more body. Since everything that is sold on StockX is authenticated – in person – it takes more hands to authenticate more articles. With that, there will be more customer service employees and as the business grows, StockX will need more engineers.
The company is already growing rapidly but Luber seems ready to double. In March, StockX had 130 people. Today, he is at 415. He thinks. He admits that it could be a little more.
"We have about 50 engineers today and I would quadruple tomorrow if I could," he said. "We have about 50 customer service employees today. I think it would be prudent to double that tomorrow, just because the activity is growing so fast, and we obviously hope it will continue to grow as we move forward. "
If StockX is to evolve, it needs more employees to ensure that the company's basic philosophy does not soften. The new funding cycle will go a long way in attracting people wanted by Luber, including additional members of the software suite. StockX works without CTO, CMO or CFO – just about all the leadership suite, admits Luber.
It seems to be part of the reasoning behind the funding. The company was not looking for financing, but, as Luber points out, as the company came to the fore, investors were asking for more and more meetings. Among the meetings they held, two companies joined Luber's vision to develop a market.
The new funding cycle comes from GV and Battery Ventures including several top investors, including DJ Steve Aoki; model and entrepreneur, Karlie Kloss; streetwear designer Don C; Salesforce founding president and co-director general, Marc Benioff; Bob Mylod, Founder and Managing Partner of Annox Capital; Shana Fisher, Managing Partner at Third Kind Venture Capital; and Jonathon Triest, managing partner of Ludlow Ventures – only Mylod and Triest are based in the Detroit area.
StockX says it intends to use the funding to expand internationally. At the moment, StockX only advertises in the US and only supports purchases in US dollars. In the future, it intends to open local versions of StockX to better support key markets by supporting local currency, language and marketing. The company could also open location operations to facilitate and expedite shipments and receptions.
"In some of these countries, we have a pretty decent customer base where people are bidding on a VPN," Luber said. "There are pictures of people walking in China with a StockX tag hanging on their shoes."
Fifteen percent of StockX sales are currently sourced from international buyers.
Of the four product categories that StockX currently sells, sneakers and streetwear make up the bulk of sales. Before expanding to different vertical markets, Luber tells me that there is plenty of room for growth in each of the current categories, but expansion means more employees.
For example, every brand of streetwear is essentially a sub-vertical, he adds, adding that if the company launches a new brand, StockX must gather a staff with branded expertise to build the catalog authentication process.
StockX is not ready to announce other types of products that it could sell. Street art seems to be the one they are exploring.
Despite growth, Luber remains attached to Detroit. He said the company will still be headquartered in Detroit and was proud to say that StockX was the second-largest tenant of Dan Gilbert's Detroit building, One Campus Martius. The company also operates a 30,000 square foot facility in the Detroit area of Corktown.
StockX could come to other cities, says Luber. The company talks about what a StockX "in-real-life" experience looks like: it could be retail, a brand experience, acceptance of products for sale or additional operating centers. The company is exploring all obvious candidates, including LA, NYC, San Francisco and Portland.
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