Every Angeleno is familiar with the Third Street Promenade. Hundreds of shops, from local small businesses to large-scale retailers, line the streets of Santa Monica with the hopes of luring in tourists, stray influencers and unsuspecting locals. The busy street also serves as the inspiration behind an LA-based startup’s recent rebrand.
Promenade announced Wednesday that it raised $11 million in a Series B round led by B. Riley Venture Capital. The company will use the fresh cash to make its SaaS platform available to small businesses in new industries.
Promenade got its start as BloomNation, a SaaS platform for small flower businesses. The platform provides florists with end-to-end enterprise services, including a website builder, point-of-sale system, email marketing, social media management and CRM services.
“Once the pandemic hit, we saw more small businesses struggling and we realized this is our time to help [them] by expanding our software offering to more than just florists,” Farbod Shoraka, co-founder and CEO of Promenade, said in an interview with Built In.
Following the latest round, the company is launching all-in-one growth platforms for local restaurants and liquor stores, titled Dig-In and Swigg, respectively. The two will join BloomNation underneath the Promenade umbrella.
“It goes way deeper than just like, oh, let’s give them a website. We think about the full cycle of their business, everything from their storefront, their web presence, their marketing tools, order management, inventory, all that stuff is handled through us,” Shoraka continued.
The pandemic has shifted the way consumers approach purchasing and picking up products, particularly food. Shoraka and his co-founder believe current trends will last beyond the viral outbreak and small businesses will continue to seek out tools that help them to better serve their customers.
“Everybody knows after the pandemic, if you’re not online, it’s going to be hard to survive in a world where people just aren’t walking into shops as much,” Gregg Weisstein, co-founder and COO of Promenade, said in an interview with Built In. “But at the same time, if you’re a pizza shop, or a liquor store, or a flower shop, you don’t necessarily know or want to necessarily invest the time in figuring out how to build your business online.”
Promenade hopes to fill that void.
“It’s pretty powerful and pretty cool to see these small businesses have the same tools that these much larger players have. It really puts them on an even playing field without having to worry about investing the same amount into building a sustainable online presence,” Weisstein said.
The company will use the additional capital to invest in its team as it continues to scale. The company is now hiring for its engineering and sales departments.
Promenade has raised a total of $18.2 million in financing to date.
