[London, ENGLAND] Undaunted by the recent collapse of
online fashion house Boo.com, several Danish firms have pumped
an additional $12 million into designer label factory outlet
Haburi.com.
Among the backers are technology company Maersk Data A/S,
department store operator Magasin and insurance company
Tryg-Baltica, three prominent Danish businesses. Funding is
also coming from Venture Partners, 2M Invest and UniInvest.
Haburi.com launched in April 2000 and has already been
rolled out to 14 European countries. It sells designer
labels at factory prices — a business concept that
rarely fails in the real world but has not been tested
online in Europe in any major way until now.
Michael Vad, chief executive officer at Haburi.com,
reported “an excellent start” and said both the
technology and the supporting logistics had
exceeded expectations. The number of customers
making purchases had reached what he called
“a satisfactory level at this stage.”
“We are now ready to continue our expansion, first
of all in the rest of Europe and then Eastern Europe
in the autumn. This new cash flow is essential to
our continued expansion,” said Vad.
Among the backers, Magasin announced in May that it
would launch Denmark’s oldest department store
on the Internet next year. Its support for Haburi.com
is partly intended as a way of gaining online
selling experience.
“Even though the business concepts are and always
will be completely different, there is no doubt that
we can learn a lot from each other both in the short
term and the long term,” said Magasin’s Chief Executive
Henrik Smith.
Each company, it appears, has a different reason for
investing in Haburi.com. Maersk Data has done so because
it expects to get a good return on its investment.
“Haburi.com has a strong concept and we believe that
the launch was timed very well,” commented Kenn Herskind,
chief executive of Maersk Data’s e-commerce division.
Michael Mathiesen, chief executive of 2M Invest is
chairman of the board at Haburi.com. In April,
Venture Partners, 2M Invest and UniInvest put in
first round financing of around $6 million.
