Appear Here, a marketplace for short-term retail space that originally launched to ride the ‘pop-up’ shop craze, has raised $12 million in Series B funding.
Leading the round is Octopus Ventures, with participation from Simon Venture Group, and existing investors Balderton, MMC, Meyer Bergman and Playfair Capital. It brings total funding for the company to $21.4 million, according to CrunchBase.
Founded in London in 2013 by then-20-year-old Ross Bailey with the support of Forward Partners (the idea-stage and seed investor that offers operational support to burgeoning founders), Appear Here offers a marketplace for short-term retail space.
The idea is to connect brands, retailers, designers and entrepreneurs with available space, and as frictionless as possible and all done online. The company launched first in the U.K., but has since expanded to France, and most recently New York in the U.S.
“With our international expansion, we’re excited to continue to build deep relationships in the top retail cities around the world,” says founder and CEO Ross Bailey, in a statement. “Appear Here is the world leader at what we do and this is the perfect time for us to scale. We’ve got offices in London, Paris and New York, and now we’re looking forward to launching more tools and opening up new locations for our growing community to take their ideas to the next level”.
To date, the startup says its marketplace has been used by more than 80,000 brands, including the likes of Nike, Loewe, Givenchy, Coca-Cola, Net-a-Porter, and Kanye West, and a raft of independents — the whole idea is to lower the barrier for a brand or startup wanting to have a temporary brick ‘n’ mortar presence, after all. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 “exclusive spaces” have been listed.
