E-commerce marketing platform secures £4m worth of Series A funding
Leeds-based Google Shopping e-commerce marketing platform, Bidnamic, has completed a £4m Series A funding round led by growth equity investor Gresham House Ventures.
This marks Bidnamic’s first institutional investment, which is also bolstered by existing angel investors, including some of the biggest names in ecommerce and technology such as Marin Mayer, co-founder of Booking.com; Chris Forrest, board advisor to Net-A-Porter; and Luke Judge, former CEO of performance marketing agency Incubeta,
The investment will accelerate the rapid growth Bidnamic has achieved by fuelling R&D projects and expansion into the US market.
Bidnamic’s origins date back to 2018, when co-founders Liam Patterson and Dr Ingvar Kraatz were running Dzinga, a print-on-demand ecommerce marketplace.
The store had grown to over 40 million differentiated products, which was unmanageable for them to run as manual campaigns on the Google Shopping ad platform.
So they built a machine learning engine to automate the process. The platform intrigued investors who trialled the technology across their portfolio companies and after impressive results, Bidnamic was founded.
The business has since grown to a team of 100, and supports hundreds of retailers and brands including three of The Sunday Times Fast Track 100’s fastest growing retailers in the UK: Lounge Underwear, Chilly’s Bottles, and Oh Polly.
Bidnamic launched in the US in 2021 and serves a growing customer base of brands like Volcom and fashion marketplace Garmentory.
In the same year, it was selected by Tech Nation to join its Upscale programme, which hosts 33 of the UK’s best performing tech companies.
Henry Alty, investment director at Gresham House Ventures, said “Bidnamic initially appeared on our radar after we saw first-hand the breakout growth the tech provided to retailers in our network.
“The company’s professional team, well-honed sales and marketing approach, capital efficient approach to growth, and the product’s proven ROI which helps deal with rising acquisition costs for online retailers all mean it is extremely well positioned to accelerate its already stellar growth.”
Liam Patterson, co-founder and CEO at Bidnamic, said: “Gresham House Ventures are a natural partner as the team bring a wealth of experience scaling B2B SaaS, specifically e-commerce integration platform Patchworks, shipping optimisation software provider Scurri, and online deals personalisation platform RevLifter.
“Further alignment comes as the Gresham House Ventures team also have experience with e-commerce investments including fashion marketplace SilkFred, used photographic equipment marketplace MPB and Crew Clothing.
“This means the team intuitively understands the pressures retailers face.”
Gresham House was supported in the investment by Granta Strategy (CDD), Equator (TDD), Menzies (FDD), Sales Blueprint (sales and marketing DD), Confidas People (organisational development) and Shoosmiths (legals).
Bidnamic was supported by Latham & Watkins.
