Nearly a year after closing their $12 million Series B, The Bouqs Co. is revealing another sizable round of funding.
Today, the Venice-based flower delivery service announced a $24 million Series C, and as one can imagine, their plans are pretty substantial.
Based on the company’s 200 percent annual yearly growth, the funding will allow the startup to aggressively scale its team and improve logistics of their flower delivery service.
“We were at 45 in December and we aim to be around 75 by the end of Q1,” said Founder and CEO John Tabis. “In the short run, what the user will experience is just faster delivery time and more reliable services. But as the year goes, both in the native app and in desktop and mobile web, we'll start introducing a host of new features that will really change the way folks shop for flowers entirely.”
Led by Partech Ventures, the round included contributions from new investors NextEquity Partners and Reimagined Ventures, as well as existing investors Azure Capital Partners, KEC Ventures, Quest Venture Partners. Last year, Robert Herjavec of ABC’s Shark Tank made an investment in the company after originally declining when Tabis was on the show in 2013.
“Fundraising in this environment is interesting. What you're seeing is a lot of selectivity, so I'd say the response is really good,” said Tabis. “We ended up with multiple term sheets, multiple great partners that we could have worked with, but I still say the same thing at this stage as I said at the early stage: it's really just about finding the right partner. It's sort of like dating, you look for someone who is going to be a really good match. What we found in Partech was a partner that understood the mission, and the company also had a lot of great retail and e-commerce shops.”
In preparation for the push, the company has spent the last several months developing an all-star cast of leaders. A particular focus of Tabis and his team will be aggressively adding to the technology staff.
“We'll double the technology staff, and that is sort of where the innovation part is going to come in. This year we're finishing up what I call the infrastructure foundation building of the company. We have the international supply chain piece that's very complex, and that's a big investment for us, but we're really investing in state of the art front-end technology to enable really unique customer experiences for our users.”
Images via The Bouqs Co.
