Athena Club, a direct-to-consumer operation that sells grooming, wellness and interval merchandise, has raised a $15 million Series A spherical of funding.
The spherical was co-led by Cue Ball Capital, with participation from Shazi Visram, founder and chief govt officer of Happy Family Organics; Stefanie Jay, chief enterprise and technique officer of eBay, and present seed buyers. So far in whole, Athena Club has raised $26 million.
Athena Club relaunched in 2019 as an e-commerce operation with its personal product line. Customers arrange subscriptions, with the choice so as to add extra merchandise to their order.
The enterprise presently sells a $9 razor equipment, $15 physique wash, $12 deodorant and different merchandise. Products are made with out substances like artificial fragrances, aluminum, parabens and triclosan, and the road has an ingredient glossary on its web site to elucidate the substances that do wind up in its formulations.
Athena Club’s subscriber base grew by greater than 2,000 % in 2020, in keeping with the corporate. Ultimately, the model’s aim is to modernize the buyer packaged good area — and the pharmacy procuring expertise.
“We are building a one-stop shop for everyone’s anything essential. We’re very focused on product quality, affordability and convenience,” mentioned Maria Markina, co-chief govt and cofounder.
With the funding, Athena Club plans to develop its person base, broaden its product providing, enhance the digital expertise and broaden the workforce.
“We’re building a modern digital drugstore experience,” Markina mentioned. “Overall, we’re really focused on becoming the first digitally native CPG company.”
The firm will broaden into different classes, the founders mentioned, and look to disrupt markets that the most important CPG gamers presently dominate. “We really rely on our customers and data to inform our decisions as we move forward, but a lot of these categories have been dominated by legacy companies often launching the same product under a new brand so we really want to tackle anything that it’s somebody’s routine,” Markina mentioned.
Athena Club will work on personalizing the digital expertise, Markina famous, and can be engaged on launching refillable merchandise. “Part of the future of CPG is also sustainability,” mentioned co-CEO Charles Desmarais. “We’re working on some really cool refillable concepts.”
For now, the corporate plans to proceed to promote direct-to-consumer.
“We don’t control the experience if we were to sell through Amazon as much — it’s a little riskier. What if someone were to receive a fake product? Eventually, we’d think about it,” mentioned Desmarais.
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