Japan-based flash sales fashion e-commerce site Monoco has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the corporate venturing unit of KDDI, and the fund’s investment partner, Japanese VC firm Global Brain. To date, Monoco has raised a seed round from corporate venturing unit CyberAgent, and a later 2011 investment of 60 million yen ($600,000) from Nippon Venture Capital, United (NGI Group at that time), and Innovation Engine, according to venture news site, startup-dating.
The deal has also sealed a deal with KDDI, which will include a navigation page on the web menu of KDDI’s smartphone subscribers, where it will introduce trending items and drive traffic to its e-commerce site, according to startup-dating. Monoco will also set up a physical store in Tokyo’s Omotesando district, to promote its brand offline.
The company specialises in selling fashion items of a limited quantity selected by curators and buyers worldwide. Since the company’s launch back in April of 2012, it has acquired more than 80,000 users, partnering with more than 900 fashion designers worldwide.
As part of its business strategy, the company plans to add more designers to improve the variety of available items, which would likely result in more revenue. They expect to bring on 2,100 designers more by the end of this year.
Monoco was previously known as Flutterscape, originally founded back in 2010 as an incubation project at Netprice.com. It had been running an e-commerce site selling Japanese products to the overseas markets but subsequently changed to its current business back in 2012.