The number of Shopify live websites grew by a whopping 201% between March 2020 and January 2022 with the shift to e-commerce during the global pandemic. With all those stores going after customers, it’s hard for individual sellers to cut through the clutter.
That problem has led to startups eager to offer their no-code or low-code technology to help Shopify merchants build their business. For example, we saw Replo for landing pages, Triple Whale for customer data, Postscript for personalized texts, Shop Circle for finding the best apps to launch a Shopify business, and Popup for online stores. In addition, all of those companies raised venture capital for those respective tools over the past year.
Minneapolis-based Buy again is the latest commercial technology start-up to raise new funding, in its case a $17 million Series A, to enhance its premier personalization platform for online retailers.
The round was led by M13, with Dynamism Capital, R-Squared Ventures and existing investors Peterson Ventures and Sidekick Partners. Privy’s Ben Jabbawy and Nik Sharma also acted as strategic investors. This follows a $4.4 million seed round in 2021 led by Peterson Ventures.
Founded in 2017 by brothers John Erck and James Van Erck, Rebuy has an end-to-end SaaS offering for e-commerce — specifically Shopify merchants — that combines artificial intelligence with no-code or low-code technology.
Merchants can then create personalized shopping experiences for their customers through upsells, cross-sells, and post-purchase follow-ups. For example, to let customers know they get free shipping when they spend $100 or more, how to give gifts with a purchase, or to understand the need to help a user find the right product to make a purchase. convert user.
It also provides data and AI intelligence to recommend ways to increase average order value, improve cart and checkout processes, or help customers get a page off Amazon by recommending additional products.
James Van Erck told businesskinda.com there has been a shift in how direct-to-consumer brands behave and how they can expand their business.
“With the iOS changes, it’s become increasingly difficult to track customers,” he said. “A year or two ago, brands were very focused on bringing in new customers. Now there is a shift happening where we focus more on your existing customers and help them provide a much better experience. That’s what Rebuy wants to do: help create these intelligent shopping experiences.”
That shift to existing customers confirmed what Rebuy had been working on for the past six years: generating smart product recommendations, said John Erck. He added that the company’s technology is currently running in nearly 7,000 online stores, including 10% of all Shopify Plus merchants.
In the past 12 months, the company tripled its revenue, released 218 new products or feature enhancements, and launched integrations with e-commerce solutions, including Klaviyo and Attentive. Erck also said that Rebuy is “well into the eight-figure annual recurring revenue phase.” In addition, the company has more than doubled its customer base in the past year and currently processes more than 4 billion web requests per month, of which more than 1 billion are behavioral analytics that flow to the AI engine.
The company plans to use the new funds for technology development, investments in the Shopify ecosystem, and additional hires to supplement its 70-person workforce. One of the new hires is Jason Nelson, Senior Vice President of Revenue. It’s also interested in pursuing a multi-platform future so that any brand can use Rebuy no matter what platform they want to run on.
Additional investment will also be made in new products, including Rebuy Search, Rebuy Intelligence Graph and Visual Editor. One of the first to come out is Rebuy Search, which Erck described as “the only component that can have an excessive influence on us when upselling, cross-selling or recommending the right products,” which is a better understanding of where individual users looking for and looking for.
“By adding search, we can enrich not just one additional touchpoint, but by using what they search to influence our personalization,” he said. “By bringing this one new product to market, we can improve the quality of recommendations from the homepage to the thank you page.”
Commenting on the investment, M13 executive Brent Murri told businesskinda.com that John Erck and James Van Erck “are not tourist technologists who developed a product and started selling it to busy merchants,” but that this is a product that was “demanded by their previous clients.”
“It’s harder to get customers on the site and it’s more expensive,” Murri said. “You have to maximize every encounter you have with them, and the trading tools that do that become business critical. They can make the difference between losing money on your first purchase and making money on your first purchase. That is one of the keys that unlocks Rebuy.”
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