Vorwerk Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of diversified conglomerate Vorwerk, has participated in a €15m ($16.8m) series B round for Germany-based online retailer Lesara, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
The round was led by venture capital firm Northzone and also included VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners.
Founded in 2013, Lesara operates an e-commerce store which enables consumers to buy products directly from Chinese factories, passing on the savings to users. The company handles all customer-facing aspects of the sale and has its own warehouses in Europe and China.
Lesara plans to use the series B funding to strengthen its market position in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands, as well as to expand into new geographies.
The company closed a $7m series A round in October 2014 led by Mangrove that also featured Funderguild, Partech Ventures and assorted angel investors. Lesara had previously secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Partech and private investors.