MCI Management, a Polish equity group and one of our sponsors, announced that it invested in Windeln, a German online retailer of baby-oriented products. According to the press release put out by MCI, they and 360 Capital Partners will be joining the store’s current investors, DN Capital and Acton Capital Partners in this round. The size of the investment is 15 million euro, so this is no minor sum.
Windeln will be using the funding for the purpose of expanding internationally and boosting its product portfolio and Tomasz Czechowicz, managing partner at MCI, says that his firm hopes that the German retailer can become the European leader in this area and successfully expand into Poland and the Czech Republic. In fact, Windeln have announced that they are planning to launch in Switzerland, Poland, and the Czech Republic later this year.
Windeln currently offers 20,000 items in its store and brings in 4 million Euro monthly in revenue. The company was founded in 2010, but reported growth dynamics of 300% for 2012.
MCI says that they have decided to invest in this business in part because they have noticed the success that other German online retailers, such as Cyberport, Trivago, and Zalando, have enjoyed and they believe that Windeln can become similarly successful in its market.
Incidentally, one of our other sponsors, Polish firm Xevin Investments, just last week announced that they had invested in a shopping club for mothers with young children. Just a few weeks before that, we wrote that Bimbasket, a shopping club in Russia for mothers, obtained about 372,000 euro from investment firm Black Ocean. Thus, there’s been quite a surge recently in investments in businesses which cater to parents of young children.
