This week, LA-based startup Nacelle announced that it raised $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Inovia Capital.
Nacelle calls itself the “headless” commerce platform for e-commerce retailers. What does that mean? Essentially, Nacelle has created the technology that can be used to build e-commerce sites for brands that want to sell their product online.
What makes this “headless” is the fact that the backend of the site is decoupled from the customer-facing frontend. This means engineers can make changes to how the site works while keeping the way the site appears to customers the same, or change the way customers use the site without having to change backend data or systems. The Nacelle platform allows easy scalability, and creates a flexible backend for engineers to build an online shopping experience tailored to fit the specific brand’s needs.
By using Nacelle, online retailers are able to decrease the amount of time it takes for pages to load, provide a shopping experience that works on both desktop and mobile, increase conversion rates and lower bounce rates.
For example, clothing brand Something Navy used Nacelle to launch its revamped site in July 2020. Within its first 30 minutes, the site was able to handle over $1 million in sales, deliver a 1.4 second load speed and a 34 millisecond page-to-page change load speed without any glitches.
It’s well known that 2020 accelerated e-commerce adoption, with a growing number of people opting to shop online instead of going into stores. As a result, retailers had to adapt and they had to do it quickly. Nacelle was able to ride this e-commerce wave.
Founded in 2019, the company raised a $4.8 million seed round in spring 2020. This Series A comes less than a year later and is nearly 4x larger than the company’s seed round. This puts the company in a good position for further growth.
Nacelle says it will use this funding to invest in building its product functionality, and also to expand its team. The company says that it plans to triple its team over the next 12 months. Nacelle has 27 employees listed on LinkedIn, so tripling the team would bring its headcount closer to 80. Right now the company has open job listings for roles across engineering, marketing, sales and customer success.
“Over the last decade, technology has changed the world of e-commerce. Merchants want to offer their customers the best shopping experience, which means load times and shopping UX is top of mind for the fastest-growing DTC brands,” Nacelle CEO Brian Anderson said in a statement. “We’re excited to lead the way in the headless movement for online retailers.”
