TrueFacet has closed on a $6 million Series A round of financing.
Maveron LLC, a venture capital firm, led the latest round. Participants in the round also included Freestyle Capital, Social Leverage, Founders’ Co-op, Trilogy and Liquid2 Ventures, which is owned by football legend Joe Montana. Global marketplace investors Rahul Mehta and John Lindfors also were participants in the round. Maveron, Freestyle, Trilogy, Social Leverage and Founder’s Co-op were also investors, along with several angels, in the firm’s seed round.
TrueFacet is the online destination site for buying and selling pre-owned designer jewelry and watches.
Tirath Kamdar, TrueFacet’s chief executive officer, said, “We created TrueFacet to enable the luxury consumer to buy, sell or trade any item in their jewelry collection in a trusted manner and at a fair price.”
The jewelry e-tailer said that since its launch in 2014, TrueFacet has achieved “sales growth of 120 percent-plus quarter over quarter” due in part to its unique access to supply. It said it currently lists more than 50,000 jewelry and watch items from more than 70 brands, including Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Rolex, Omega and Hermes, among other brands.
Jason Stoffer, a partner at Maveron, said, “TrueFacet is rapidly transforming the opaque and illiquid pre-loved jewelry market by providing consumers with fail-proof counterfeit detection, deep value and unmatched supply.”
Price points are about 30 percent to 70 percent below retail, with sellers receiving up to 85 percent of the sale price. Some of the hard-to-find pieces sold this year include: Patek Philippe 5575-G Limited Edition watch, $120,000; Rolex Daytona Platinum Oyster Men’s watch, $75,000, and a Bulgari Serpenti bracelet, $63,000.
The company in November appointed François Kress to join its board. Kress is the current ceo of Carolina Herrera and former ceo and managing director of Bulgari. He also previously held senior positions at Stuart Weitzman and at The Row.