Sneaker Marketplace Platform "Novelship" Receives 146 Billion Rupiah Series A Funding

Platform marketplacesneaker and apparel authentic Novelships received series A funding worth close to $10 million or IDR 146 billion led by GSR Ventures and East Ventures. In addition, K3 Ventures and iGlobe Partners also participated. The fresh funds will be used to strengthen its position in the region and globally.

Established in 2018, Novelship is a marketplace for limited edition fashion products, such as shoes sneaker, clothes streetwear, and various other collections. Novelship performs curation to ensure the authenticity of the items in each collection. Some of the brands sold include Nike, Air Jordan, Yeezy, Supreme, and Kaws.

Novelship Co-Founder & CEO Richard Xia said that the product market potential sneaker and streetwear very large, especially sales growth which is dominated by gen Z. In addition, street culture has a loyal community base and opportunities are rare in the retail segment. It predicts the market sneaker and streetwear in Asia Pacific is worth $33 billion, mainly this growth was achieved during the pandemic.

For this reason, this funding will be used to accelerate expansion so that its position can win the market, not only in Asia, but also in the world. Currently, Novelship will still focus on strengthening its market in Asia before expanding to other regions. With its presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan, it targets to lead these countries.

"In-depth experience, insight into E-commerce, and the broad connections of our best investors and mentors in the region can help Novelship to serve more customers across Asia Pacific and the world," Xia said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Cuaca believe in the development of culture sneaker in Asia, Novelship is well positioned to make a real impact in this market.

"Novelship can also be one of the marketplace most popular with Gen Z. We believe in the founders to take Novelship to its next phase of growth," added Willson.

Trial payment with crypto

Jefferson Chen, partner at GSR Ventures, believes Novelship is developing a unique platform that has the potential to be one stopmarketplace to meet the needs of consumers, especially Generation Z, both physically and virtually. 

According to Richard Xia, his party is currently preparing a number of expansion plans, such as introducing a payment method with cryptocurrency (crypto), add partnerships with brands sneaker or apparel others, and explore integration metaverse in the retail world.

His party has carried out a payment trial cryptocurrency so as to serve more high-value customers. With this trial, Novelship recorded an increase in average order value per customer. One of them, shoes sneaker for over $200K has been purchased with digital token payments.

"We always listen to our customers and strive to provide a great customer experience," said Xia.

Meanwhile, throughout 2021, Novelship said it had pocketed sales volume growth of 5,3 times and had served consumers throughout Asia Pacific (APAC).