We’re delighted to say we recently closed a significant funding round for our client, Secret Sales, who received investment from German company, Brands4friends, both operating in the hot space of private retail sales - the story was reported on here and here (Techcrunch).

As reported in the joint press release:

“In just two years, brands4friends.de has established itself as Germany’s largest online private shopping club with annual revenues of €80 million. The investment accelerates the international expansion of brands4friends.de and will allow Secretsales.com to become the UK’s leading online private shopping club.

Established in London in July 2007, Secretsales.com has grown quickly to become one of the UK’s leading online private shopping clubs. The founders have concentrated on building a diverse portfolio of lifestyle, fashion, homeware and leisure product categories spanning over 450 partner brands.

Christian Heitmeyer

“After carefully examining various options, it quickly became apparent that Secretsales.com was our first choice in the UK,” said Christian Heitmeyer, CEO and founder of brands4friends.de. “The combination of entering one of the largest and most key e‐commerce markets in Europe and partnering with Secretsales.com holds enormous potential. We recognize large prospects in Secretsales.com. The existence of a strong management team led by CEO Nish Kukadia and our learning curve convinced us that together we will reach the leading UK position. The expansion will benefit our valued brand partners in terms of brand awareness, sales and image and also our customers by gaining access to even more top brands from the planned portfolio expansion.”

Secretsales.com’s vision and leadership coupled with its performance and consistent growth since launch has attracted significant interest from a range of different investors, and brands4friends.de was identified as the perfect partner for reasons of shared strategic vision and economies of scale.

Nish Kukadia

Nish Kukadia, a founder and Chief Executive of Secretsales.com expands: “Having brands4friends.de on board provides Secretsales.com with the best route to realising our plans and pursuing an aggressive growth strategy. The brands4friends.de team in Germany has already demonstrated an exceptional capacity to create a market‐shaking online shopping club business. We will work closely to share and capitalise on their learnings, technology, marketing intelligence, infrastructure and cross‐sourcing opportunities which will undoubtedly benefit the combined supplier portfolio and extensive customer base. We´re extremely proud to be working together.”