Startup, Appear Here, secures Series B investment to boost growth in America

The winner of the Startups Awards 2015, Appear Here, has raised around £10m in Series B funding, along with a strategic partnership with real-estate venture capital firm, Fifth Wall.

The round, which closed in May 2017, was led by Octopus Ventures with a participation from Simon Venture Group, alongside investors including Balderton, MMC and Playfair Capital. The total investment in the company now stands at $21.4m (around £16m).

Founded by Ross Bailey in 2013, Startups 100 Top 10 company, Appear Here, is an online marketplace for short-term retail space, which aims to enable businesses to rent out thousands of spaces across London, Paris, and New York - as of April 2017.

Speaking to Startups.co.uk, Bailey commented: “With our international expansion, we’re excited to continue to build deep relationships in the top retail cities around the world. Appear Here is the world leader at what we do and this is the perfect time for us to scale.

“We’ve got offices in London, Paris and New York, and now we’re looking forward to launching more tools and opening up new locations for our growing community to take their ideas to the next level”.

More than 100,000 brands have used Appear Here to date, including Supreme, Loewe, Coca-Cola, Net-a-Porter and Kanye West, alongside thousands of independent businesses and entrepreneurs.

The partnership with Fifth Wall will guarantee vacant store supply as Appear Here - which claims to generate $33m (about £25m) in demand each month - looks to newly list “millions of retail sq ft” across the US market.

Fifth Wall invested in Appear Here down to its benefit of providing three key groups in the space: landlords, brokers and brands, offering flexibility and better value than has traditionally been seen in such sector of the real-estate industry.

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