CPE Media News (4/26/2019) – Mejuri Inc. has raised US $23 million in Series B funding led by NEA with participation from Imaginary Ventures, and existing investors, Felix Capital, BDC Capital, Incite Ventures, and Dash Ventures.
Founded in 2015 by wife and husband team, Noura Sakkijha and Majed Masad, Mejuri is an online direct to consumer fine jewelry brand focused on millennial women. The company also operates two retail stores, one each in Toronto and New York City.
Mejuri has previously raised $1 million in seed funding in 2016 and 2017 and $5 million in Series A in 2018. Mejuri investors also include Real Ventures and 500 Startup Canada.
photo credit: Mejuri
Felix Capital Blog
Mejuri, building the iconic jewellery brand for millennial women
Felix Capital
Apr 25
Mejuri, with its 400k-strong Instagram community, is on a path to build the iconic jewellery brand for a generation of women
Mejuri raises a $23m Series B to continue building the iconic jewellery brand focused on millennial women
In the summer of last year we led a $5m Series A round in Mejuri, direct to consumer fine jewellery brand focused on millennial women. We discovered Mejuri first through doing a deep dive in jewellery and using Instagram to identify emerging jewellery brands. Although at that time (in January 2017) Mejuri had less than 50 thousand followers, we could see that the team was building a special bond with their digital community through Instagram. It was obvious in engagement metrics, comments, mentions.
Today Mejuri’s Instagram community is over 400 thousand people strong, the business has quadrupled year-on-year since inception, and Mejuri has just announced the $23m Series B funding round led by NEA, with participation from Imaginary Ventures, two funds we deeply respect, and whose investment lens around community, brand and creativity are similar to ours. We are deeply proud of everything that Mejuri has achieved and we cannot wait to see what the team will accomplish going forward!
Brands & Instagram: Love Affair
The story of how we discovered Mejuri is very dear to us because Instagram has been a place of community-building and brand-building for many of Felix’s portfolio companies. A lot has been written already about the role that the platform has played in the emergence of new digitally native brands, especially in beauty, wellness, and fashion.
Within our own portfolio, brands such as Anine Bing, Highsnobiety and Goop have leveraged Instagram to build engaged communities, communicate with their customers and acquire new loyal fans.
For many brands Instagram has become an important paid marketing channel as it gets brands reach (Instagram has 1 billion users globally) and engagement (average user spends almost an hour a day on Instagram).
However, for brands in our portfolio Instagram is also an organic channel where loyal fans interact with each other, with the brand, share their excitement, feedback and sometimes grievances. It’s an integral part of brand identity and communication with customers.
As we look at the brands we have backed that have strong following on Instagram, we see their mastery of the social platform as their strength. It is by no means the only channel through which they reach their customers, but it’s one where feedback loop is short, reach can be endless, and opportunity for an authentic community building significant, if done right.
And now — off we go to scroll through IG! (Who knows? Maybe it’ll bring us to our next investment!)