Month: July 2021

Elevate Brands, a New York- and Austin-based startup that acquires and runs third-party Amazon merchants, has picked up $250 million in funding, money that it will be using both to continue investing in its technology, as well as to buy up more small businesses.

Check out the coverage for their funding announcement below!

TechCrunch: Elevate Brands banks $250M to roll up third-party merchants selling on Amazon’s marketplace

Austin Business Journal: How Elevate Brands will use fresh $250M to scale the Amazon sellers it acquires

Austin American-Statesman: Elevate Brands, which recently opened Austin HQ, lands $250 million to fuel growth

Multichannel Merchant: Elevate Brands Raises Additional $250M in Funding To Fuel Global Acquisitions of Amazon Marketplace Sellers

The Hustle: Investors are rolling up Amazon stores. And making a killing.

Axios: Top of the Morning Newsletter

Business Insider Deutschland: While you Slept Newsletter

Ecommerce Times: Amazon Seller Acquisition Market Seeing Unprecedented Activity

SaaS Industry: Elevate Brands raises $250M in additional funding to continue expanding into international markets

Tech Breezer: Elevate Brands Bank $ 250 Million to Gather Third-Party Vendors Selling in Amazon Marketplace

Startup Around: Elevate Brands Raises $250M in Funding

Sales Ground: Amazon seller acquisition market with unprecedented activity

Austin Business Journal: In the money July 19: Nearly $400M raised in Austin

Multichannel Merchant: Elevate Brands Raises $250M to Grow Amazon Rollup Business

The Amazon roll-up play — where one company creates economies of scale by buying up and consolidating multiple smaller third-party merchants that sell their goods via Amazon’s marketplace — continues to be a strong e-commerce trend, and in the latest development, one of the hopefuls in this space is announcing a major injection of capital to fuel its own place in the field.

Elevate Brands, a New York- and Austin-based startup that acquires and runs third-party Amazon merchants, has picked up $250 million in funding, money that it will be using both to continue investing in its technology, as well as to buy up more small businesses.

Elevate is already profitable, with 25 brands currently in its stable, many of which also have come to Elevate with patents for their products, CEO and founder Ryan Gnesin told TechCrunch. The plan will be to continue to enhance the systems it has in place for evaluating potential M&A and analyzing the landscape overall — today its algorithms use some 100 million data points, it says, to find suitable acquisition targets — and to continue building out other organizational efficiencies.

“We started selling at the end of 2016, testing the waters by selling a few private label products,” Ryan Gnesin, the CEO and founder of Elevated, told TechCrunch in an interview. That gave the company an early look at how to handle supply chains in manufacturing, and to think about how to differentiate its products from similar ones that are sold alongside them on Amazon. By 2017, Elevate was managing some 8,000 SKUs under that model.

Read the full article: Elevate Brands banks $250M to roll up third-party merchants selling on Amazon’s marketplace

Leonardo247 is digital asset management solution for property managers.

Leonardo247 serves as a bonding agent between the known and unknown of managing multiple large apartment communities

What you should know
Apartment community management is as fluid as it static.

Regimented, everyday tasks sit atop an unstable, malleable foundation. Leasing agents and maintenance teams work daily to tackle figurative and literal fires, while juggling items like patio power-washing and late notices.

Yet, Leonardo247 serves as a bonding agent between the known and unknown. For example, every solution for every surprise can be recorded into template of best practices and action items. They can be saved with the emergency plans that include ways to handle everything from floods to an active shooter.

Users are offered an upfront “top 10” issues to address each day upon log-in. From there, tasks can be assigned, messages sent and documents attached.

Daily, weekly and monthly management operations are organized according to community and customized to each as well. That means properties with pools and on-site playgrounds will have lists for each, all appropriate documentation (service contracts, old contracts, insurance, permits, etc.) and each required contact.

There’s an internal “Slack-like” communications feature for both management staff, residents and vendors with permission-based categories and threads.

One very cool feature, which is patented, is an algorithm that seeks and integrates local municipal regulations for apartment communities to ensure every manager is aware of their role in abiding by them. It’s subtle — but very valuable.

I worked for a major commercial real estate company early in my career, and now, it’s a global brand. I helped in marketing for the asset management team, and never once did I attend a meeting where a Nextel phone wasn’t going off.

If you don’t recall, Nextel mobile phones employed a walkie-talkie feature that made immediate, campus-wide communications faster than Slack, and they were perfect for property management teams, as are the mobile apps for Leonardo247.

Everything in the browser app, available for both major platforms, is tightly minimized to focus on what matters for the always-mobile operations teams. It will no doubt become a staff-wide hub of interactivity.

Read the full article: Inman Review: Property managers have a smart, efficient partner in Leonardo247