Men’s fashion ecommerce site Maskoolin last week announced a pre-series A funding round of an undisclosed amount. It’s based out of Jakarta and focuses on the Indonesian market.
The new capital comes from Indra Djokosoetono, an owner and family member of Indonesia’s largest taxi company, Blue Bird Group. It’s one of the nation’s highest-profile family-owned conglomerates, which recently went public on the Indonesia Stock Exchange.
Maskoolin was built in 2012 by entrepreneurs Ilham Syafrialdi, Errol Widhavian, Kristian Harahap, and Kemal Wiryawan. In February 2013, the startup grabbed seed funding from local venture capital firm Grupara. Since then, Maskoolin hasn’t got much media attention and no follow-on funding rounds despite the nation’s ongoing ecommerce boom.
Tough to grow
“Maskoolin started out as a flash sale ecommerce site and we realized that it is really hard to scale this type of business. Not many brands are happy working with full discounted websites like what we did before,” Maskoolin’s CEO Ilham tells Tech in Asia. “New, similar ecommerce competitors have also emerged since 2014 and this may have affected our growth as well. The hectic nature of running logistics operations and production was always the biggest problem for us to scale.”
Regardless, Aryo Ariotedjo, founder and managing partner of Grupara says he remains optimistic about the startup. “I always believed in the team’s potential. Products may fail, but founders are the ones who will always improve and find the best model to grow the business,” says Aryo. “I am very proud with the team, as they have made it thus far and I am sure that Maskoolin will be something majestic in the future.”
Rollercoaster ride
Ilham says Maskoolin’s growth has been up and down since mid-2014. He claims that last year the store saw traffic rise as high as 600,000 monthly visits, but later experienced a sharp decline to around 150,000. SimilarWeb’s verified mobile and desktop traffic says Maskoolin has been clocking anywherebetween 65,000 and 100,000 monthly visits over the past six months.
For this reason, Maskoolin has developed a “smarter shopping discovery platform.” Ilham says the new strategy has helped the site grow once again and that Maskoolin is now back up to 400,000 monthly visits. He adds that the firm is currently spending no more than US$1,000 per month on marketing and is trying to create organic growth via articles and content marketing.
Ilham says Indra invested in Maskoolin because he is a fan of the new platform. “Of course, we are planning to raise more and more money soon as we have also learned from our mistake of not being aggressive enough in fund raising,” he explains. “We would admit that we were in a comfort zone back then by being focused on making profits, and then somehow we realized that building a startup company is not only about making early profits, but it is about trying to reserve bigger chunks [of capital] as fast as possible.”
In Indonesia, the specialist store competes with fast-moving names likeBerryBenka, Zalora Indonesia, Paraplou, VIP Plaza, and Bobobobo.
Maskoolin may have some magic up its sleeve, as the funding round brings the company to a seven-digit valuation, adds Aryo. The Maskoolin team says it is hatching plans to expand in Southeast Asia.
