Lesara raises 30 million euros

German fashion retailer Lesara has raised another 30 million euros from investors. The online fashion discounter has now raised a total of 90 million euros during the last few years. With the fresh funding, Lesara wants to further grow the company in Europe.

It’s less than a year ago that Lesara received about 30 million euros in a series C funding round. And now, the ecommerce startup has secured another 30 million euros from investors, founder Roman Kirsch told Handelsblatt.

Investing in logistics

The fresh money comes in handy, as for the first time Lesara invests in its own logistics. In August, for example, the distribution center in Erfurt that costs 45 million euros goes into operation. And later this year, the online fashion retailer will expand into another country. Lesara will then be available in 25 different countries.

14 million euros worth of losses in 2016

It looks like Lesara is in here for the long haul. Generating profit seems less important for now. In 2016, the company’s loss amounted to 14 million euros. There are no more recent figures, but it wouldn’t come as a surprise to us if Lesara is still generating big losses.

Lesara is sometimes loose with the truth

In any case, it’s important to look carefully at the data and news Lesara is presenting. For example, for a long time CEO and founder Roman Kirsch presented the company’s turnover by including returns. This made the turnover twice as high as it actually was. For example, he said the turnover for 2017 was worth 150 million euros, while in presentations for investors only 71 million euros were mentioned, as Handelsblatt writes.

And t3n has a similar story. Lesara says it’s different from other online fashion retailers, because it reacts as quickly as possible to current fashion trends. Through direct cooperation with Chinese suppliers, fashion items should be able to be manufactured within only ten days of order. “Whether this is always done that way, however, may be doubted”, t3n writes. “In 2015, E-tailment analysed a few random samples and concluded that at least some of the products sold on Lesara weren’t created exclusively for the fashion discounter and, in some cases, it was even cheaper to buy the same items on the Chinese online marketplace AliExpress.”