he popular ecommerce service for beauty products, announced Monday that it has raised $60 million in funding.
The Series B funding round was led by Viking Global Investors and brings Birchbox's total funding to date to just more than $70 million. Fortune, which broke the news, that the latest funding round values Birchbox at around $485 million.
From the start, the Birchbox team has tried to rethink the experience for customers discovering and making first-time purchases of beauty products online. During the holiday season last year, Birchbox's founders saw a notable uptick in traction among brands and consumers and decided it was time to raise additional funds to seize the momentum.
"W"We still feel like we are in the earliest innings, but this is a moment, this is an inflection point to invest in and really push hard when we are seeing traction, momentum and excitement," Katia Beauchamp, cofounder of Birchbox, told Mashable.
The New York startup launched in 2010 with a focus on women's beauty products and editorial content, and expanded into men's products in 2012. Earlier this year, Birchbox announced plans to open its first brick-and-mortar location in Manhattan.
Some of the funding will be put toward investing in offline retail, which Beauchamp describes as being more about the data than anything else. Birchbox is also planning to staff up its technology and merchandizing teams, grow its presence in Europe and North America and invest in more traditional marketing efforts like TV and magazine ad buys. To date, the startup has focused mainly on Internet advertising.
Birchbox now has more than 800,000 subscribers and the company has grown to more than 250 employees globally. Fortune estimates that Birchbox is generating at least $125 million in revenue per year.
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