MONTREAL, Oct. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ – GOODEE, the B Corp Certified, home and lifestyle marketplace and online destination for sustainable designs, announces the completion of a $2 million CAD ($1.5 Million USD) Series 2 Seed round of financing. The funding round closed with a significant increased investment from BDC Capital and includes follow-on pro-rata investments from the José Neves Family Fund; Joe Mimran, founder of Club Monaco; Erol Uzumeri, co-founder of Searchlight Capital; alongside initial Seed Series 1 lead investor and impact fund, Good & Well, and new investor, impact fund Marigold Capital. This additional round brings GOODEE’s total funding to date to $4.7 million CAD ($3.5 million USD).
“In just 18 months, we’ve watched GOODEE thrive through launch as a start-up to tremendous growth today,” said Michelle Scarborough, Managing Partner at BDC Capital. “This is exactly the kind of tech-enabled partner BDC Capital looks to invest in. We are excited to deepen our partnership with GOODEE as they continue to build and scale the platform.”
GOODEE will use the fresh capital to increase its influence, with plans to further build out its digital and merchandising teams, continue launching new ethical brand partners and GOODEE-branded products, and enhance its customer reach across U.S. markets, which already account for over 80% of the company’s turnover.
Founded in June 2019 by award-winning designers and curators Byron and Dexter Peart, GOODEE is a pioneering platform championing “good design, good people, and good purpose”. Aligning its mission to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, GOODEE exists first and foremost as a tech-oriented, market-based solution to some of the most pressing challenges facing people and the planet, including poverty reduction, gender equality, and climate change mitigation.
“In our lives and our careers, Dexter and I felt more and more frustrated by a broken retail system built upon seasonality and markdowns and short-sighted values of throw-away and trend-dependent culture. We were inspired to break the status quo and felt motivated to provide an aspirational and educational design destination for an engaged community of conscious consumers and impact-minded makers from around the globe to collectively call home,” said co-founder Byron Peart.
The new funding builds on a year of remarkable achievements for GOODEE, which saw the company successfully debut an international retail pop-up experience at the Whitney Museum Shop in New York City, and earn B Corporation Certification after only nine months of business. With this certification, which endorses GOODEE’s purpose to drive positive change, the company made a commitment to continuously measure and report its social and environmental performance, ensuring transparency and accountability in all its operations.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, GOODEE reports a second consecutive quarter of exponential growth, with sales increasing over 50% during the lockdown quarter. GOODEE, whose core customers are women aged 24 to 44, attributes this consistent traction and momentum to a heightened interest in supporting sustainability-driven brands and black-owned businesses, along with an increased demand for online home décor items spurred by a new, home-bound reality.
“At a time of such unprecedented change, GOODEE is perfectly positioned as the leading e-commerce platform for sustainable home design – empowering diverse, ethical makers and consumers to make a social and environmental impact by choosing less but better,” said co-founder Dexter Peart. “We are proud to have assembled a diverse group of strategic investors who strongly believe in the vision and impact of GOODEE.”
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