Heroes, an e-commerce company that buys, operates, and scales Amazon businesses raised $65 million (approx £49 million) funding. The funding will predominantly be used to finance further acquisitions, grow the brands, and continue to build out the team.
Who invested?
The round was led by Fuel Ventures and 360 Capital Partners with participation from Upper90 and other prominent angel investors including Matt Robinson, co-founder of GoCardless and Nested, and Carlos Gonzales, COO at GoCardless.
Mark Pearson, CEO at Fuel Ventures says: “With a proven business model and two excellent founders in Riccardo and Alessio, Heroes have the requisite tools needed to be the major player within the European FBA ecosystem. From our initial discussions all the way through to leading what is one of the largest seed rounds seen across Europe, we’ve been incredibly impressed by Riccardo and Alessio’s joint vision for the business and their plans to execute. Investing into Heroes was a golden opportunity and we couldn’t be more excited to be a part of their journey going forwards.”
Heroes: Thrasio of UK
Co-founded by identical twin brothers Riccardo and Alessio Bruni in June 2020, Heroes is very similar to US-based unicorn Thrasio and focuses on acquiring FBA (‘Fulfilment by Amazon’) brands that are performing well in a high-growth niche sector including Baby, Pets, Homeware, Kitchenware, Garden, DIY, Sports, and Outdoors.
Notably, Riccardo Bruni brings years of investing experience from his time as a VC investor at EQT Ventures and M&A at Merrill Lynch. On the other hand, Alessio Bruni also started his career in M&A at Perella Weinberg Partners, before leading the retail division as a VP at Lazada, the ‘Amazon of South East Asia’.
What is ‘Fulfilment by Amazon’?
To reiterate, FBA (‘Fulfilment by Amazon’) is a hands-free method of selling on Amazon where sellers store their products inside Amazon’s warehouse. Amazon then fulfills the orders, ships them directly to the customer, and manages customer support.
This model enabled third-party sellers to become entrepreneurs and build successful e-commerce businesses by leveraging Amazon’s fulfillment infrastructure.
Aims to become largest operator of Amazon FBA brands
Notably, independent third-party sellers generated $261B (approx £196B) in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) on Amazon in 2019 and are expected to reach $650B (approx £490B) in GMV by 2025.
In this case, Heroes enables the 2.3 million brand owners to sell their business and capitalise on the work they have invested over the last years. The company aims to become Europe’s largest acquirer and operator of Amazon FBA brands in the coming years.
Riccardo Bruni, co-founder of Heroes, says: “We’re excited to come out of stealth mode and announce our first funding round. The support from investors since our early days has been a huge vote of confidence in both our vision and the team. We are moving at an unprecedented speed having closed our first couple of acquisitions and already achieved profitability. Our goal is to become Europe’s largest acquirer and operator of Amazon FBA brands in the coming years and we’re looking forward to partnering with exceptional brands and entrepreneurs going forward.”