The round was led by CrossCut Ventures and joined by Double M Partners and others, along with angel investors, including Joanne Wilson. The company also announced its beta release and Development Partner Program.

Founded by tech industry veterans Sara Hicks and Aaron Singmaster-Judd, Reaction enables designers, developers and entrepreneurs to create an online shop via an easy-to-use interface, leading developer tools and pioneering frameworks. Reaction is built to offer the simplicity that small-and-medium-sized businesses expect, along with the reliability, customization and scalability that larger retailers and developers require. The two founders have decades of experience leading teams at startups and companies, including Etsy, Yahoo, Media Temple and more.

'With Reaction Commerce, Sara and Aaron are bringing a wealth of passion, experience and innovation to the retail technology space, a sector that remains surprisingly outdated and challenging for businesses,' said Brian Garrett, co-founder and managing director of CrossCut Ventures. 'They have put together a great team and have set their sights on simplifying the process of selling goods online, which represents a huge opportunity.'

'Ecommerce is still too difficult for businesses and developers, especially in today's global marketplace and mobile landscape,' said Sara Hicks, co-founder and CEO. 'We've designed Reaction with the vision of creating a completely open, intelligent, data-driven platform, one that removes the mystery around how to convert visitors into buyers.'

The Reaction Platform
Reaction is currently the largest open source JavaScript commerce platform on GitHub, and has seen over 14,000 shop signups on its hosted solution. Reaction's feature set includes catalog and variant management, drag-and-drop merchandising, inline editing, mobile-ready themes, integrated analytics and a growing gallery of integrated third-party applications for launching an online store or marketplace. Reaction is the only platform with the ability to see all shop changes in real time, on all browsers or native apps, without page reloads or app updates. The shop owner experience mimics the online shopper's experience, eliminating the need for lengthy forms and archaic taxonomies.

Reaction's hosted platform-as-a-service reduces the DevOps difficulties associated with scaling and deploying commerce applications, allowing customizations of the open source codebase to be quickly deployed. By utilizing an app container infrastructure and serverless technologies, Reaction eliminates the overhead and expense of managing cloud and dedicated servers.

Reaction has attracted the attention of major brands and startups, as well as many others who are actively developing shops and marketplaces on top of it. 'Reaction was the only customizable platform that would work with my shop, which is centered around ski clothing and gear rentals,' said Spencer Norman, vice president of Engineering at GetOutfitted and a Reaction customer. 'The fact that they're reactive by default is amazing. It could be the future of ecommerce.'

The Reaction Development Partner Program
Reaction Commerce is also announcing the launch of its Development Partner Program to attract and reward ecommerce developers and agencies. Over 500 partners are already signed up to have access to the Reaction core development team, marketing materials to help educate clients, a partner newsletter and blog, platform data and analytics, and a listing in a partner directory.

'The Reaction team has a beautiful list of planned and implemented features which shouldn't just be a part of high-priced systems, but available as open source,' said Rachael Yaeger of Human NYC, a Reaction development partner. 'It wasn't just the features, though. We really wanted to be a part of a real community and a higher vision.'

Shoptalk 2016 Award
Reaction Commerce recently competed in the Startup Pitch competition at the inaugural Shoptalk 2016, the new blockbuster retail and ecommerce event. Competing against 15 early-stage ecommerce companies, Reaction won the competition for its potential to transform the retail industry.

For more details on Reaction Commerce, today's news and to sign up for the beta release, please visit reactioncommerce.com.

About Reaction Commerce
Reaction Commerce is a modern and open commerce platform built for the scale and simplicity required by today's business owners, designers, and developers. Reaction is the first intelligent and easily customizable cloud solution to provide real-time merchandising, pricing and promotions, and live monitoring of conversions. The full-stack platform is internationalized and localized, architected for shops and marketplaces, and is the largest JavaScript commerce project on GitHub, with developer interest growing more than 232 percent year over year. Their managed cloud solution has now seen over 14,000 signups. Reaction Commerce is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. For more information visit reactioncommerce.com or email hello(at)reactioncommerce(dot)com and follow Reaction Commerce on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.