NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - June 23, 2015) - Olapic (http://www.olapic.com), the leading Visual Marketing Content Engine for turning consumer-generated photos and videos into brand assets, today announced it closed a $15 million Series B round of funding led by Felix Capital, with participation from Unilever Ventures, Fung Capital, Longworth Venture Partners, Michael Lazerow, Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin Investments. The proceeds of this funding round will allow Olapic to further its global expansion across markets in Europe and Asia, and fuel the development of new products that address the growing visual content shortage facing brand marketers.
"This round of funding validates the rapid growth in the visual marketing category and the critical need brands have for more content," said Pau Sabria, co-founder and CEO of Olapic. "Today's consumer is speaking a new, visual language that values authenticity and expects fresh, original creative to be ready for consumption at the speed of social."
To date, marketing teams have had to rely on costly creative agencies and elaborate photo shoots to produce assets with little or no insights on how that creative might perform. Olapic offers a way for brands to quickly fill the content gap with consumer-generated imagery that has been analyzed and filtered based on its predicted rate of engagement and conversion power. As a consumer-generated content engine, Olapic's technology includes Photorank™, a proprietary machine learning algorithm that predicts which photos will perform best across channels including e-commerce, advertising, social, direct and in-store.
"With the fast rise of a more visual web, marketers face a very real challenge in keeping pace with the consumer demand for visual content," said Frederic Court, managing partner, Felix Capital. "In looking for companies that are at the intersection of technology and creativity, we see Olapic solving a growing need and defining a new way for brands to turn consumer-generated content into creative assets."
Olapic is the first company to unlock the selling power of visual content stored in platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook to help brands increase engagement, loyalty and conversion rates. The Olapic platform integrates with many of the leading marketing cloud and e-commerce platforms to power these tools with intelligent content and offers critical analytics to measure how these images perform throughout the consumer journey.
As the leading platform in the U.S. and Europe, Olapic has grown to more than 100 employees globally and launched several industry-first products, including its Predictive Consumer Generated Ads for Facebook, photo and video syndication tools and technology integration into the email marketing channel. Olapic is now in use by more than 200 of the world's most iconic and venerable brands including Calvin Klein, L'Oreal, Target and Unilever.
"Our success in the first half of 2015 included major client wins, product launches and industry accolades. This round of funding adds to our momentum and will fuel us for more industry innovation," stated Luis Sanz, co-founder and COO of Olapic. "We will be providing visual marketing capabilities for brands around consumer videos in particular. In five years time, we will all wonder how we ever relied so heavily on stock photography to sell products."
About Olapic
Olapic is the leading visual content marketing engine for collecting, curating and showcasing consumer-generated photos across marketing channels and in e-commerce environments. Olapic collects consumer photos and videos from social media sites including Instagram, Facebook, Vine, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr to help brands and retailers significantly increase sales and marketing campaign performance by creating more authentic brand experiences. Olapic is headquartered in New York City with offices in Cordoba, Argentina, and London. For more information on Olapic, visit www.olapic.com.
About Felix Capital
Felix Capital ("Felix") is a venture capital firm for the creative class, operating at the intersection of technology and creativity. The fund focuses on digital lifestyle, investing in brands and related enabling-technologies including Farfetch, The Food Assembly, The Business of Fashion, and Olapic. Based in London, Felix operates across Europe and the US and just announced its first $120m fund in June 2015.
About Unilever Ventures
Unilever Ventures is the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever. They invest in early young, promising companies, accelerating growth by providing access to Unilever's global ecosystem, assets and expertise. The fund looks to invest in tomorrow's world-beaters in Personal Care and Digital. Key focus areas within Digital include content creation, data analytics, eCommerce, internet of things, mobile marketing, social media, and video in both developed and emerging markets. Unilever Venture's existing investments include Brandtone, Iluminage Beauty, Big Sync Music, Froosh, Snog, and Voltea. For further information, please visit: www.unileverventures.com
About Fung Capital USA
Fung Capital USA is a private investment arm of the families of Victor Fung and William Fung who are the controlling shareholders of the Fung Group which comprises of privately held retailing businesses and four public listed companies: Li & Fung Limited (SEHK: 00494) is the leading consumer goods design, development, sourcing and logistics company for major retailers and brands around the world with over $20B in revenues and 26,000 employees in over 40 countries; Global Brands Group Holding Limited (SEHK: 00787) is one of the world's leading companies for branded apparel, footwear, fashion accessories and related lifestyle products; Convenience Retail Asia Limited (SEHK: 00831), is principally engaged in the operation of the Circle K convenience stores and Saint Honore Cake Shop bakery chains in Southern China, including Hong Kong and Macau. Trinity Limited (SEHK: 00891) is a leading retailer of high-end menswear brands -- Cerruti, Kent & Curwen, Gieves & Hawkes and D'URBAN -- in Greater China and Europe, as well as licensing the brands it owns globally. Fung Capital USA invests primarily in B2B technology companies that enable omni-channel retailing and supply chain efficiency. For more information about Fung Capital USA, please visit: www.fungcap.com
About Longworth Venture Partners
Longworth Venture Partners, a Boston based venture firm, invests in early and seed stage Internet, digital media and software companies. Founded in 1999, Longworth leverages the deep operating experience of its principals and its market-driven research process to identify and help grow the leading companies of tomorrow. To learn more, visit: www.longworth.com
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Contact Information:
Media Contact:
Jocelyn Johnson
jocelyn@olapic.com
917-406-5886
