LVMH has led a fundraising round in fashion search platform Lyst as the world’s largest luxury group by revenues seeks to expand and improve its presence online.
As part of the investment, LVMH’s head of digital Ian Rogers will have a seat on the board of Lyst.
A statement from Lyst said that the investment will support its continued international expansion into new markets, and will fuel its growth across its teams in London and New York. Lyst said that it is now profitable and has grown revenues over 400 per cent in the past three years since it last raised funds.
Terms of the deal, which was first flagged by Sky News, were not disclosed. The size of LVMH's investment was below $60m, according to a person familiar with the situation.
London-based startup Lyst is a digital shopping platform that allows consumers to search and shop over 11,000 designers and stores in one place, offering them daily curated edits and personalised style recommendations.
Luxury groups are jostling for a share of the fast-growing ecommerce market. Last year 9 per cent of luxury purchases were made online, according to consultant Bain & Company, which predicts that this will reach 20 per cent by 2025.
As part of this push, in October 2015 LVMH hired Mr Rogers from Apple to the newly-created role of head of digital. Last year he helped LVMH launch a push into ecommerce with 24Sevres.com, a site that brings its iconic Parisian department store Le Bon Marché online. It’s entering a highly-competitive market dominated by the likes of Yoox, Net-a-Porter, Farfetch and Alibaba-owned Tmall.
Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH, invested in Lyst three years through his family office Groupe Arnault in a $40m funding round with venture capital firms including Accel and Balderton.