London’s Mercaux brings online benefits to brick-and-mortar stores, secures €1.5 million pre-Series B round of debt financing from Flashpoint
London, UK, 10 June 2021 — Mercaux, a leading SaaS company, offering a single platform to digitize physical retail, today announced that it has secured €1.5 million in new debt financing from Flashpoint Venture Debt.
Mercaux helps transform retail stores from simple point of sale, into multi-purpose centers that deliver a personalized in-store customer experience and omnichannel sales, as well as serve as customer acquisition and remote selling channels. They achieve this by deploying built-for-purpose modular in-store digital platform that connects stores to e-commerce and other systems, such as OMS, PIM, and CRM. The Company’s in-store solutions are operated by store associates, or self-served by customers, and also reveal a rich pool of in-store customer behavior data that can be leveraged in other channels.
The digitization of the physical store results in customers experiencing a seamless omnichannel shopping experience, resulting in longer LTV, improved conversion, higher UPT (Units per transaction) and sales. Mercaux currently serves the needs of some of the world’s largest retail brands including Stadium Goods, Dufry, Holland & Barrett and TENDAM (formerly the Cortifiel Group), to name but a few, operating in more than 1,000 stores across the world.
Mercaux’s multi-tenancy and API-first SaaS platform features a modular and configurable architecture making it the strongest competitive advantage of the Company. Mercaux’s clients deploy solutions that align to their digital transformation roadmap, meaning that they can launch assisted selling, clienteling, fulfilment, mPOS or remote selling solutions in isolation from one another, aligned to their business readiness. Furthermore, its proprietary data integration solutions and partnerships with large retail tech providers, like Salesforce and SAP, allows for a speedy deployment of the solution.
Olga Kotsur, co-Founder & CEO of Mercaux commented, “What Shopify is for E-commerce, Mercaux is for physical stores. The pandemic-led increase in exposure to the benefits of digital shopping naturally resulted in the need to re-think the role of the stores and reposition them as a complementary, rather than competing channel to online. The subsequent increase in demand for retailers to digitize the store has resulted in high levels of interest towards the space, in a very short period of time.”
Kotsur concludes. “This investment from Flashpoint Venture Debt will provide Mercaux with the capital to further complement its existing in-store platform with new solutions, expand our global customer base and place us comfortably on course for Series B. We very much enjoyed our discussions with the Flashpoint Venture Debt Team and a smooth execution process and look forward to working with them in the coming months.”
Flashpoint Venture Debt’s Managing Partner, Donatella Callegaris said: “The retail sector has historically been underpenetrated by new technology and COVID-19 pandemic brought a sobering realization that this needs to change, and it needs to change fast. Mercaux is well positioned to take advantage of this shift having an enterprise grade product and an incredible team to support the sector with its transformation. We are extremely excited to work with Olga and team and become a part of Mercaux’s growth story.”