[NEWS] Trendy luggage brand Away packs on $100M, rolls past $1.4B valuation – Loganspace

Away‘s new lofty valuation proves how a ways you would maybe maybe well rep with fabulous branding.

The narrate-to-user seller of Instagrammable bags has quiet $100 million in new funding at a $1.4 billion valuation in a spherical led by Wellington Administration, with enhance fromBaillie Gifford,Lone Pine Capital and Global Founders Capital, experiencesThe Wall Avenue Journal.

We’ve reached out toAwayfor observation.

The capital might be outmoded to make extra brick-and-mortar stores, besides as add to Away’s portfolio of merchandise with an ogle in opposition to increasing into generic commute equipment. Thus a ways, Away has sold bigger than 1 million suitcases.

“When any person’s going on a lunge to, we ought to develop the entirety that they ought to lunge on on that commute,” Away co-founder and chief tag officerJen Rubiotalked about recently on NPR’s How I Constructed This podcast.

Rubio’s ogle for branding and social media skills has bolstered the firm, as has varied celebrities’ early adoption of the emblem. Rubio obtained her birth up atWarby Parkeras the firm’s head of social media. In 2015, she brought her belief for a recent bags firm to Steph Korey, Warby’s aged head of present chain.

Away’s new valuation, up from $400 million in 2018, firmly locations Away into the unicorn club. It joins several other recently added female-founded corporations to the uncommon neighborhood, equivalent to Rent The Runway and Glossier.

Right here’s a closer ponder at its funind history, by assignment ofPitchBook:

August 2015:$2.5 million seed spherical at a $7.2 million valuation
September 2016:$8.5 million Series A at a $40 million valuation
Could well well 2017:$20 million Series B at a $120 million valuation
June 2018:$50 million Series C at a $400 million valuation
Could well well 2019: $100 million at a $1.4 billion valuation

Away has brought in a complete of $181 million, including the latest funding. Previously, Away raised a$50 million Series Cand claimed within the announcement that it had already hit profitability, a valuable accomplishment for a startup that modified into aloof alarmed of 3-years-aged.

Away is backed by Forerunner Ventures, Accel, Battery Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Shawn Carter, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield and Karlie Kloss.

Butterfield and Rubio’s are romantically linked and probably soon-to-be married? The well-identified Slack executiveTweetedrapidly after the WSJ memoir on Away broke asking Rubio to marry him. She has yet to narrate her response.

All in a day’s work.