Dutch e-commerce brand buyer Dwarfs secures another €30 million

Dutch e-commerce brand buyer Dwarfs has secured €30 million in a Series B funding round, one that was initially anticipated to be much, much larger.

The €30 million Series B round funding was provided via existing investors Solid Venture Partners and Harlan Capital, with a number of angel investors also joining the round, notably, former Dutch Minister for Finance, Jan-Kees de Jager.

After having closed a €30 million debt financing round in September of 2021, namely to acquire four brands that had already been targeted and negotiated, Dwarfs indicated that they’d already started focusing on a much larger debt and equity-based Series B round. 

In a report from MT/Sprout, Dwarfs CEO and co-founder Demian Beenakker, revealed that the company was ready to announce a €150 million credit facility, “when war broke out in Ukraine and everything changed. We had worked really hard for four or five months to get that partner on board. But the fact that it didn't happen also indicated the phase the economy had reached.”

Far from alone in the space, Thrasio, SellerX, Olsam, Razor Group, and Heroes all come to mind, banking on €150 million and ending up with €30 million certainly calls for a reshaping and rethinking of the business model. According to MT/Sprout, Beenakker and Co. have a small number of acquisition targets with a combined turnover of approximately €100 million on their list.

“If we manage to take over 5 by July, we will reach a tipping point: then we will certainly have enough turnover to keep all expertise and infrastructure under one roof,” said Beenakker.

The only marketplace aggregator hailing from the Benelux region, Dwarfs has raised a total of €67.5 million, a figure that pales in comparison to competitors such as US-based Thrasio (which entered the European marketplace in late 2020) which has raised over $3 billion in funding, dedicating well over half a billion euros to its European activities.