SHANGHAI, March 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- USHOPAL, a leading new luxury beauty and new retail group in China, has announced the completion of a 100 million USD round of financing, driving up its investment pool to 200 million USD, aimed at supporting USHOPAL's portfolio brands' rapid growth in China and Asia Pacific. The leading investor for this round is FountainVest Partners, a leading private equity firm that specializes in global brand investment, which recently acquired the parent company of ARC'TERYX, Amer Sports. Co-investors include Cathay Capital, Zhongyuan Capital, Hengxu Capital and Dazhong Zhongsong Fund.
Founded in 2017, USHOPAL is uniquely positioned to focus on niche, global luxury beauty brands of the highest standards but with limited awareness in China. Its portfolio mainly covers brands exclusively sold at high-end retail outlets such as Harrods from the UK, Le Bon Marché from France, Neiman Marcus from the US, etc.
With gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2020 surpassing 200 million USD, USHOPAL has scaled a portfolio of luxury niche brands into major new luxury beauty players in China, such as Natura Bisse, Juliette Has a Gun, Chantecaille, and more.
USHOPAL offers unique omni-branding and growth capabilities for portfolio brands with a fleet of more than 2,500 luxury influencers, an in-house content studio, branding team, an omni-channel growth team, Tmall retail operations, global logistics and Bonnie & Clyde (BC) - a chain of multi-brand brick-and-mortar brand stores and experience centers.
In 2019, to better align long-term growth objectives with the brands USHOPAL distributes for China and Asia Pacific, USHOPAL built a large capital reserve so that it may co-invest for brand awareness, and even further, to provide much more flexible operations supported by equity investments. One recent example includes leading niche perfume brand, Juliette Has A Gun, which USHOPAL invested in equity at a global level, and built awareness and scaled rapidly in China.
In addition to shopping USHOPAL's compelling brand portfolio online, customers could also experience them at its chain of luxury multi-brand beauty centers - Bonnie & Clyde. Bonnie & Clyde has built its presence as a top luxury beauty sales channel at top-tier locations including Jing An Kerry Center, HKRI Taikoo Hui, Plaza 66 and K11 in Shanghai. All BC locations boast an average transaction value exceeding 5,000 RMB (approximately 770 USD), with customers often spending over 10,000 RMB (approximately 1500 USD) per ticket. Commanding five brand centers in Shanghai, USHOPAL plans to expand Bonnie & Clyde to more metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Chengdu and reach 11 destinations by the end of 2021.
Unlike other beauty chains that focus on mass traffic, discounting and sample-selling without authorization and hence cannot access top-tier locations, Bonnie & Clyde is fully authorized by the brands with full brand-dedicated zones and meet-up spaces for key opinion leaders (KOLs).
Bonnie & Clyde also offers customers the unique opportunity to experience non-animal-tested cross-border products in all their locations. Consumers can then purchase the products they like online. Bonnie & Clyde is also the only beauty destination with an infrastructure that will deliver all products within 4 hours to customers with customs fully cleared.
Lu Guo, founder and CEO of USHOPAL, said, "With this round of financing, the already cash-flexible USHOPAL will be even more equipped to invest in its portfolio, and Bonnie & Clyde experience centers. The USHOPAL leadership team has many years of brand-building and omnichannel-building experience, making it uniquely positioned to fuse story-telling and know-how to build up superbly differentiated niche luxury beauty brands into category leaders in China. We will continue to co-invest and reinforce USHOPAL's brand matrix to become a retail group bold and respected globally."
About USHOPAL
The USHOPAL brand acceleration group partners and invests in the next generation of luxury brands in the beauty and wellness space. We seek passionate innovators and management teams looking to develop category-leading brands. We provide the operational resources and capital required to take brands to the next level.
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