Marketplace Ankorstore becomes unicorn

B2B-marketplace Ankorstore has secured 250 million euros. After only two years of operations, the French company is Europe’s latest unicorn with a value over 1,75 billion euros. The platform wants to use the money to develop their existing services and open new offices in Italy and Spain.

Ankorstore is a wholesale marketplace with a customer base of 15 thousand brands and 200 thousand retailers in Europe. On the platform, independent brands can sell products to retailers, offering anything from household supplies to beauty products.

11 thousand new brands in 2021

The 250 million euros in funding came from Bond and Tiger Global as well as Eurazeo, in addition to existing investors like Index Ventures and Aglae. In May of 2021, the company already raised over 80 million for further European expansion.

Last year the company added 11 thousand new brands.

Ankorstore’s new unicorn status follows a very successful year for the company. Last year the company added 11 thousand new brands and increased their sales volume with 950 percent.

Offices in Italy and Spain

Ankorstore is currently active in 23 countries with offices in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In 2022, the company wants to open additional offices in Italy and Spain to ‘be as close to our brands and retailers as possible’, says Co-CEO and -founder Nicolas Cohen.

In 2022 Ankorstore wants to open offices in Italy and Spain.

“Our mission is to create a global wholesale business to swing the balance in favor of independents.” Cohen adds: “This funding will allow us to expand geographically and accelerate activities in our European core markets.”

New product categories

According to Nicolas D’Audiffret, Co-CEO and -founder, the company is already hiring employees for the expansion. There are also plans for additional products and features.

“We plan to scale both horizontally and vertically by adding new product categories and features. We recently added two new categories “sports & wellbeing” and “pets” to our five core product categories and will continue to invest in major product and tech developments to improve the customer experience for our community.”