NYC’s Bark & Co, the dog-lover’s ecommerce tech company, has just netted a cool $15 million in Series B led by Resolute.vc.
Ecommerce analysts whose minds are turning to New York’s doggie treat subscription service BarkBox are, so to speak, barking up the right tree: Bark & Co came into being as a result of the astonishing success of “the box”. It seems as though canine lovers are a populous breed: so great has been the success of BarkBox that Bark & Co recently launched a new vet care-on-demand service, BarkCare, as well as a new content portal aptly named “The Bark Post”.
Services for doggie lovers
The latter attracted 1 million visits in December last year but by June that number had skyrocketed to 10.5 million. It doesn’t take a genius ecommerce analyst to figure out that there’s a big dog-loving market out there, and Bark & Co intend to corner it. In addition to BarkBox, BarkCare and the Bark Post, the company has also just introduced a new mobile app, BarkBuddy, which it describes as “Tinder for dogs.”
Users simply swipe left or right to indicate whether or not they love the doggie images posted there. Thereupon, they‘re shown how to get to the local dog shelter where they can adopt the pooch they‘ve fallen for (the app is integrated with Pet Finder, the pet data aggregator). In its first month, BarkBuddy was on fire: there were no fewer than 100,000 downloads and so far it has led to 100 dog adoptions.
Marching forward to new growth opportunities
All of this, even the more skeptical ecommerce analysts might agree, builds a picture of a dynamic and thriving company. Bark & Co.’s co-founder, Matt Meeker, told TechCrunch journalist Sarah Perez that the company had been considering a couple of options – sell or raise a growth round. The cash raise option won out.
As Meeker puts it:
“We kind of went this middle route. [Investors] made an offer that let us put a little bit of money in the company, and we coupled that with a line of credit. Basically, it’s cushion in case the world makes a turn on us that’s unexpected, or if other opportunities come along.”
Bark & Co has been cash-flow positive since the last quarter of 2013.