China’s Yetang, a fashion marketplace for post-90’s hipsters, raises US$5M

Yetang co-founders Natasia Guo, right, and Yan Zhang, left, with two designers from Xiamen.

Yetang, the Chinese ecommerce marketplace for indie designer apparel and accessories, revealed today that it has raised a US$5 million series A round from DCM Ventures.

When we last covered Yetang, the company was eight months old and running on seed money from IDG Ventures. The funding from DCM now puts it in the company of several other high-profile Chinese startups, including Tuniu (which IPO’d and then took private funding from JD and Baidu), the Uber-esque Yongche, Alibaba-owned Kanbox, and app store Wandoujia.

Yetang cofounder Natasia Guo tells Tech in Asia that the funding will be used to ramp up staffing and grow out its product suite. Currently at 40 employees, Guo aims to more than double the team size in 2015 as it prepares an Android app, along with an as-yet unrevealed new product launch. She claims that the company sold over 110,000 goods in 2014 to date.

Guo and co-founder Yan Zhang formed Yetang in October 2013 after departing Nuandao, a like-minded startup that launched in 2012.

As KPMG notes, China’s ecommerce market will likely grow more fragmented over time, as consumers of varying degrees of wealth form different online purchasing habits. Through Yetang, Guo and Zhang target consumers from China’s post-90’s generation that value design and want to express their individuality through the goods they buy.

“I think all people have a part of them that wants to be unique, and those are the people we’re trying to appeal to,” says Guo. “It just so happens that the post-90’s generation is the demographic that really embraces this.”

“With the government ban on luxury goods, along with the needs of [the post-90’s generation], you now see a lot of boutique stores both online and offline. We also see a lot of young people that want to be fashion entrepreneurs – they want to own something of their own and express themselves through these products. We see this as a great sign for us, because we’ll constantly have great merchandise to sell,” she adds.

This post China’s Yetang, a fashion marketplace for post-90’s hipsters, raises US$5M appeared first on Tech in Asia.

China’s Yetang, a fashion marketplace for post-90’s hipsters, raises US$5M