Amplience today announced the successful closing of a $10.5 million Series B round of funding. Led by Octopus Investments, funding has come from existing stakeholders and investors including Northstar Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank, to support the company's continued growth in the North American and Northern European regions.
Since opening its first U.S. office in 2013, Amplience has enjoyed significant expansion across the region, a complement to the company's growth in Northern European markets. This development is supported largely by a stream of strong customer wins, expansion of existing accounts, and the development of its AmplienceOne Big Content Platform. The new funding comes on the heels of the company's significant growth over the past year, which saw over fifty new customer wins. The company has helped some of the world's most recognizable online retailers, such as Wehkamp, Saks Fifth Avenue, Shop Direct Group, Tesco and Marks and Spencer, use rich and dynamic content to connect with their channels and customers. The company also grew its employee count by 60 percent in 2014 to support a doubling in Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR).
In addition to supporting Amplience's plans for further global expansion, the investment will also fund continued enhancements of the AmplienceOne Big Content Platform, the most recent of which was the Social and User Generated Content (UGC) solution. This new solution will be used by ecommerce leaders, such as Shop Direct, Dune, Labelux and L.K. Bennett, to curate social and user generated content from Instagram and other channels. Retailers can tag products within this social content and deliver it throughout the customer journey to drive conversions.
'Amplience's goal is to make it easier for retailers to connect with their customers across all the channels through which today's consumers interact with a brand,' said James Brooke, Amplience's CEO. 'This investment provides us with with the capital to continue the development of our Big Content platform, which gives retailers all the tools required to achieve this goal, and to accelerate our expansion in the North American market and beyond.'
'With today's consumers expecting nothing less than a perfectly seamless experience across all retail channels, Amplience is perfectly placed to enable retailers to cater to this customer demand,' said Jo Oliver, a member of the Ventures team at Octopus. 'Here at Octopus, we are dedicated to supporting businesses that have an exceptional ability to transform an industry. We are excited to provide Amplience with financing that will help the company further develop its North American footprint as they continue to shape the ecommerce technology marketplace.'
Commenting on the financing, Andrew Hunter, Director at Silicon Valley Bank, said: 'It has been impressive to witness the traction Amplience has gained since our first commitment to the business over a year ago. In particular, Amplience has secured key North American clients and further investment in their platform, which have positioned the business well for future success. We are delighted to further support the Amplience team during this important phase of their growth plans.'
Michelle Cooper, Investment Manager at Northstar Ventures, added: 'The management team at Amplience is doing exceptionally well, and we continue to be impressed with the significant progress it is making. Northstar Ventures is very pleased by the exciting and rapid growth of the team in the North East, and they have built some great relationships with some of the region's Universities, including Teesside. I look forward to working with Amplience to help them expand even further as the business grows internationally.'
About AmplienceOne
AmplienceOne is the Big Content platform that brings marketing and e-commerce teams together to create inspirational online shopping experiences. It simplifies and unifies rich content and asset management by eliminating duplicate processes and automating media production, publishing and distribution workflows to seamlessly integrate brand content into high traffic commerce customer journeys, on any device and in any language.
The AmplienceOne Big Content platform powers digital experiences for over 150 leading global brands, including: Shop Direct Group, Wehkamp, Sweaty Betty, JD Williams, Tesco, House of Fraser, Sleepy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, DFS, Marks and Spencer, Jimmy Choo, Dune, Giuseppe Zannotti and Halfords.
For more information, please visit www.amplience.com and follow us on Twitter at @Amplience.