Ideeli Raises $20 Million For Private Shopping
Invitations to online sales of last year's luxury goods are a hot category right now -- witness Kleiner Perkin's investment today, amount undisclosed, in a purveyor of home decor called One Kings Lane. Ideeli, however, has been in business for over two years, has 1.3 million members and expects to do over $100 million in revenue next year selling heavily discounted designer clothes, according to co-founder and CEO Paul Hurley. Ideeli will also be opening a home business soon to compete with One Kings Lane. Scale matters in online sales, Hurley said, and so far there are three startups in the luxury category that are significantly bigger than the others -- Gilt (raised $48 million, according to Thomson Reuters), RueLaLa (sold in October to GSI Commerce for $350 million) and Ideeli, which has now raised around $30 million.
