Otrium has raised a $26 million Series B funding round (€24 million) with Eight Roads Ventures leading the round. Existing investors Index Ventures and Hans Veldhuizen also participated. Otrium works with clothing brands to help them sell items when they reach the end-of-season status.
Due to fast fashion, you have to regularly clear some space in your stores and recover inventory from third-party stores to release new items. But end-of-season sales aren’t enough. Brands end up with a lot of inventory on their hand. And those items often get destroyed.
Otrium wants to add another sales channel for those specific items — and it’s an online one, which should help when it comes to shelf space. Lockdowns around the world have also generated more excess inventory for the spring–summer 2020 collections.
Fashion brands don’t want to sell outdated items on their own site because scarcity creates value. First, customers should check regularly with their favorite fashion brand to see what they’re selling right now. Second, fashion brands don’t want you to see that you could wait a few months to get an item for cheap.
That’s why Otrium has created a marketplace and tries to be as friendly as possible with fashion brands. If you decide to sell end-of-season collections on Otrium, you can manage your own outlet, get in-depth analytics and enable a dynamic pricing engine to maximize revenue on those outdated items.
200 brands have decided to partner with Otrium, such as Joseph, Reiss, G-Star, Asics, Puma, Vans, Pepe Jeans, Alexachung and Scotch & Soda. There are one million registered customers on Otrium.
The e-commerce website is currently live in the Netherlands, France and Germany. It just launched its site in the U.K. as well. With today’s funding round, you can expect more international expansions in the future.