Odore, the all-in-one platform for brands to design and deliver exceptional product campaigns, today announces that it has raised £1M ($1.35M) for its seed round led by Blackfinch Ventures. Additional participants in the oversubscribed round include SFC Capital, as well as notable angel investors such as Alister Esam. The investment will be used to further Odore’s mission of putting customer engagement back into the hands of brands, investing in its platform capabilities, international expansion and expanding the team.
While beauty and grooming e-commerce surged 42% in the UK alone in 2020, the average conversion rate for the eCommerce industry dropped from 2.31% to 2.12% in the same year. With the increasing complexity around data privacy rules, coupled with a lack of tools for marketers, brands are struggling to create long term customer value and provide personalised content at scale. Poor marketing personalisation efforts can result in brands losing 38% of their customers, which is leading both legacy and newcomer brands to take notice.
Launched in 2018 by co-founders Armaan Mehta and Karan Gupta (pictured), Odore provides an all-in-one customer engagement platform that helps brands build personalised experiences and journeys across multiple channels at scale. The Odore platform integrates with existing systems (such as Klaviyo, Shopify, Salesforce, Digital Sampling and more), making it easier for brands to build and deploy (with an easy no-code content builder, multichannel marketing automation, A/B testing and more), as well as offering monitoring, retargeting and retaining (through real-time reporting, segmentation and retargeting).
Today, Odore has a team of 15 employees and counts industry giants such as LVMH and L’Oreal as clients, as well as D2C disruptors such as Naples Soap and Tata Harper. The latest investment will be used to further Odore’s mission and growth, including investing in its platform, recruiting best-in-class talent and fuelling the company’s international expansion.
James Brookner, Ventures Director at Blackfinch, said: “Odore’s team recognises that personalisation is essential for modern consumer brands. They’ve developed a digital-first marketing approach that enables beauty brands of all sizes to develop meaningful relationships with consumers, maximising their return on investment.
James added: “Odore’s platform is cleanly designed, offers end-to-end functionality and customers clearly love it. Monthly revenue has grown exponentially since launch, and Armaan and Karan have been very successful in signing up some of the very best global beauty brands.
We are confident this investment will help Odore continue on its growth journey, expand its customer base and solidify the company’s stellar reputation in the beauty industry.”
Armaan Mehta, Co-Founder at Odore, said: “We’ve had the pleasure of working with some the best in the industry and have listened to their pain points, which has led to the creation of a platform that takes the customer and brand relationship to a new and exciting era. Personalisation is the future of e-commerce, and we’re thrilled to have found investors in Blackfinch who are passionate about this mission and are fully aligned with our values and approach.”
