Dropit, a retail technology platform that bridges the digital divide by integrating merchants’ online and in-store inventory, has raised $25 million in Series C funding.
In the year Founded in 2014, London-based Dropit counts retail brands including L’Occitane, Abercrombie & Fitch and Estee Lauder in addition to malls. At its core, Dropit is about enabling brands to sell their in-store items online, essentially turning brick-and-mortar outlets into something of a local distribution center – customers buy their items digitally, using Dropit’s “smart sourcing” technology to find the merchandise at a physical location close to the customer and thereby Send based.
So even if a brand or distributor already has online inventory for certain goods, Dropit brings their offline inventory into the mix and joins all the dots to speed up delivery and reduce the impact of shipping goods far away.
On top of that, a major selling point for retailers in malls, Dropit can also consolidate the mall’s entire brand network into one online marketplace. This is especially important now that the mall’s foot traffic has fully recovered post-pandemic, as mall stores can generate afternoon sales despite in-person visits, as well as allowing customers to shop from multiple locations. Stores at once.
Drop: Malls grouping stores into one shopping area
Combined
At the heart of the Dropit platform are integrations – it can be connected to any point in the sales or fulfillment chain, which is one of the reasons why the founder and CEO of Dropit, Karin Kabili, says that it is not in direct competition with any other domestic or foreign retailer. system, whether Shopify or another eCommerce platform.
“Dropit aims to solve the macro problem created by the retail industry’s proliferation of product inventory and lack of ability to combine local store presence with last-mile delivery,” Kabili told TechCrunch. “One of our key strengths is data and systems integration. In this effort, we’ve built integrations with many systems, including Shopify, which has done great work in the e-commerce space, creating a user-friendly platform recommended for SMBs.”
By integrating with multiple third-party couriers, Dropit allows brands and malls to offer same-day or next-day delivery on in-store and online transactions, though curbside pickup is also offered. It also allows merchants to consolidate their shipments and shipments to reduce split shipments.
“Dropit’s mission is to solve the problem of efficient optimization for the retail industry while being careful not to compromise the level of service provided to customers,” added Kabili.
The Dropit platform shows the courier options
For example, a retailer looking to use Dropit as an existing technology stack can bridge Dropit between orders, warehouse, point-of-sale (POS) and ecommerce (eg Shopify) on one side, and checks, payments and couriers on the other. Retailers can decide for themselves what value they want to extract from Dropit, such as easy in-store collection and packaging capabilities, and whether they want curbside pickup or courier delivery.
“Dropit integrates with existing systems to fill gaps without the need to invest any additional capital or technology resources,” explained Kabilit.
In addition to powering the backend for retailers and malls, Dropit also offers a mobile app for shoppers who want to shop face-to-face, but it’s important to note that they don’t want to carry luggage. So basically they search participating stores in the app, shop as usual, but when they get to the (physical) checkout, scan a little Dropit QR code at the checkout and choose where to get their bags.
Dropit consumer app
Expansion
Since its launch six years ago, Dropit has been gaining steady demand across Europe and North America. And last year it was signed up by Primaris in Canada to manage Primarche, billed as “the world’s first multi-market, multi-brand marketplace” — essentially, bringing Primaris’ national market network into one online entity. This differentiates Dropit from something like the Mall of America (MOA) in Bloomington, Minnesota, which created a similar online marketplace but for stores in a single mall.
Dropit previously raised $25 million in two undisclosed rounds of funding in 2016 and 2018, and with a new $25 million in the bank, the company is well-funded to expand into existing markets. It already has an office in Austin, Texas.
Dropit’s Series C round was led by Vault Investments, along with Tiga Investments, Acentia, SugarBee and others, including former Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren, who sits on Dropit’s board of directors.
