- Series A funding round led by Next Coast Ventures
- Vertical specific marketplaces continue to disrupt collectible markets
- Company plans to build out business, marketing, development efforts, and product roadmap
October 29, 2020 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hip eCommerce, the collectibles specific marketplaces and technology company, today announced a $5.325M Series A round of funding. Led by Next Coast Ventures, the current round brings total funding to date to just under $7M. Hip eCommerce will utilize the funding to augment business, marketing, product, and engineering efforts, as well as to accelerate its product roadmap and continue to build revolutionary features for both buyers and sellers of collectibles.
Hip eCommerce Closes $5M Series A Funding Round, Continues Revolutionary eCommerce Innovations for Collectibles
Hip eCommerce builds marketplaces for specific collectibles, each built from the ground up to provide exceptional experiences and features. As eCommerce for collectibles remained stuck in the 1990s, with hundreds of billions in collectible sales remaining offline or unrealized each year, Hip eCommerce’s innovations specific to comic books, stamps, and postcards have enabled online sales to be optimized and offline inventory and sales to be digitized.
“With the modern-day renaissance we’re seeing in collectibles, the time is right to bring collecting into the 21st century and beyond,” said Hip eCommerce CEO Mark Rosenberg. “With this round, we’ve expanded our Board of Directors to include Mike Smerklo, David Kalt, the founder of Reverb.com, and Cotter Cunningham, the founder of RetailMeNot, who joins us as our new Executive Chair. With the team behind Next Coast Ventures, our current Director, Scot Wingo, and our new Board members, we have such a deep understanding of building marketplaces, that I honestly could not dream of better partners to move forward with and take Hip eCommerce to the next level.”
Launched in 2016, Hip eCommerce operates HipStamp.com, HipComic.com, and HipPostcard.com, and today has over $18 Million in annualized GMV. Hip eCommerce is constantly innovating the collectibles markets, including its launch earlier this year of Comic Book Image Recognition software, which allows Sellers to list comic books 4x faster, creating entire item listings, complete with Volume, Issue Number, and more from just a single image.
“Hip eCommerce fits squarely in our Reimagining Marketplaces and Retail Retold themes,” says Next Coast Ventures Co-Founder and Managing Director Michael Smerklo. “We see a potential to disrupt the large collectibles industry by bringing substantial offline inventory online to expand the market. Utilizing Mark’s deep domain expertise, the company is taking a vertical approach to niche collectible categories that have traditionally been underserved by larger horizontal marketplaces. With Next Coast Ventures’ Entrepreneurs Council member Cotter Cunningham joining the board and bringing a wealth of consumer Internet and marketing expertise, Mark and the team at Hip eCommerce are positioned for explosive growth. We are delighted to welcome Hip eCommerce to the Next Coast portfolio!”
About Hip eCommerce
Hip eCommerce builds and operates collectible-specific marketplaces, including: HipComic, HipStamp, and HipPostcard. It currently has over 1,500 Sellers, 150,000 Members, 10 Million Listings, and over $18 Million in annualized GMV. Within the $200 Billion worldwide market of collectibles, there are many unique categories. Hip eCommerce believes that by creating specific marketplaces, built from the ground up to understand how collectors browse, search and collect each type of collectible, we can deliver an exceptional customer experience for both buyers and sellers. Learn more at https://www.hipecommerce.com.
About Next Coast Ventures
Next Coast Ventures is an Austin-based venture capital firm that partners with bold entrepreneurs building innovative companies in big markets. It provides early-stage capital to high-growth startups in ‘Next Coast’ markets, using macro trends and themes to guide its investment strategy. Next Coast provides its growing group of portfolio companies hands-on, company building resources through its strong industry network, Entrepreneurs Council program and the founders’ own experiences as entrepreneurs. Learn more at https://www.nextcoastventures.com.