Royal Mail have taken a stake in Mallzee, an app which brings together more than two million fashion items from over 100 retailers, remembers your tastes and curates content to make recommendations. It offers an additional, complementary channel to market for clothing retailers, one of the fastestgrowing and largest market sectors for parcel sending, hence Royal Mail’s interest.
Royal Mail say that their investment in Mallzee reflects the increasingly technology-driven nature of the delivery market. It helps align the business with the rapid growth in consumer purchases made from mobile devices and provides Royal Mail with exposure to new, high-growth revenue streams further up the value chain, as well as complementing Royal Mail’s existing parcel services.
Together with the acquisition of Storefeeder in February this year, the investment in Mallzee is part of Royal Mail’s continued focus on digital innovation and brings innovative ecommerce capability to the company. In turn, Royal Mail can introduce Mallzee capabilities to many more retailers who not already present on the platform.
Royal Mail’s investment is part of a £2.5 million round of fundraising and values the company significantly higher than a deal on Dragon’s Den earlier this year. At the time Peter Jones made an offer of £75,000 for a 20% stake dropping to 15% once his investment was returned. Mallzee walked away from the deal only wanting to give up 5% equity at that time.
Royal Mail will take a seat on the Mallzee board and their aim will be to introduce new retailers to the platform. Retailers pay a fee to be featured on the app plus paying Mallzee a fee for successful sales. In all but name Mallzee is a marketplace. It’s a marketplace app that has never bothered with the old fashioned part of building a marketplace website.
