Shopware have announced that Carlyle and PayPal have invested $100m in the omnichannel digital commerce platform. Founders Sebastian and Stefan Hamann will retain a significant majority stake in the business and remain co-CEOs of the company. Carlyle and PayPal’s growth capital will help drive Shopware’s international expansion and the development of new products.
Shopware is highly flexible and has a rich set of features, supporting complex B2C, D2C, B2B and services-driven business models. Shopware’s technology is API-first and uses an open-source architecture, allowing merchants to scale while creating unique customer experiences. Its platform caters to a highly diversified customer base across a wide range of different industry verticals, focused on sophisticated mid-market merchants but also serving multinational market leaders including Philips, Jägermeister and Aston Martin.
In 2021, Shopware approached a platform gross merchandise value (GMV) of USD 20 billion. Following the successful rollout of Shopware 6, the company was listed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. Recent product innovations have positioned the company as a leader in the expanding digital commerce software market for mid-market merchants in DACH.
This funding will help us supercharge our international growth – enabling Shopware to capture the significant opportunities ahead of us. As a business, we are proud to have been profitable from day one, and are excited to work closely alongside Carlyle and PayPal to build on Shopware’s positioning in the long term.
– Stefan Hamann, co-CEO of Shopware
The past few years have accelerated the need for an open-source approach that provides outstanding shopping experiences for customers, and we are poised to further benefit from this growth opportunity. We’re looking forward to working with Carlyle and PayPal – two companies with strong expertise in digital commerce – on the next stage of our journey.
– Co-CEO Sebastian Hamann
Shopware, a company 100% bootstrapped prior to this investment, is ideally suited to CETP’s strategy of partnering with ambitious, founder-led technology companies. We were attracted to the company’s highly flexible omnichannel platform, its strong momentum in the underserved mid-market merchant segment, and the entrepreneurial drive of the two co-founders. We look forward to working with Sebastian and Stefan and the rest of the Shopware team in supporting the business become an international leader in digital commerce technology.
– Michael Wand, Managing Director and Co-Head of CETP
Michael Wand will join Shopware’s board of directors together with CETP’s Constantin Boye, Director.
