Raised another $12 million to sell out-of-stock items at other retailers • TechCrunch

French startup Stokely is raising a $12 million Series A round (€12 million) from Eurazeo, Daphne and several business angels. The company aggregates the inventory of several e-commerce websites. If a retailer is out of stock on a popular item, they can still accept the order and process the order at a different retailer’s inventory.

This is a startup network game. As it grows in stock, the product becomes more interesting because there are more partner retailers on the platform. Some of Stockley’s clients include Galeries Lafayette, Jonak, Go Sport and Decathlon.

If there are multiple suppliers that can fulfill the order, Stock automatically selects a retailer based on several criteria such as price, distance and quality score. Stockley also tells its partners to use neutral packaging to keep everything clear to the end customer.

The main technical challenge is that Stokely must synchronize millions of objects at any given time. It integrates with existing e-commerce product feeds and should reflect stockline information in real-time.

For example, Stokely can’t say it will get a product at a certain price if there are some delays and no one else has that product in stock. But if it works as expected, it’s an easy sell because it improves the user experience and everyone gets some revenue along the way — the e-commerce retailer, the product supplier, and the stockist.

With today’s funding, the company plans to reach 50 employees and sign on with more retailers. Both Eurazeo and Daphne are doubling down on their investment since they invested in Stokely last year.