It’s a big day over here for the Arta team, our clients, and our partners. I am excited to announce our $11m Series A led by AXA Venture Partners and with participation from Corazon Capital, Coelius Capital, Pari Passu Venture Partners, and Mu Ventures, among others. We’ve come a long way since our early days as a logistics marketplace for white glove transportation. Today we’re proud to offer a suite of e-commerce and fulfillment technology along with global end-to-end post-purchase automation services. This evolution didn’t happen overnight, taking grit and tenacity from our team, continuous commitment from our clients, and belief in our vision from our partners. And we’re so grateful.
In the hundreds of conversations we had with investors over the last two years, we were often introducing a new segment of commerce along with our vision for the future. With the investors we’ve partnered with today, we share a view that commerce is increasingly accelerating towards digital experiences, and there are still areas of commerce that are lacking automated, seamless, and delightful experiences for buyers and sellers alike.
The highly variable, high-value market is an incredible opportunity that—though a little late to digitize—is accelerating as fast as any industry towards a digital future with an expanding buyer and seller base. As this industry moves towards e-commerce, there is a need for technology that creates automated and seamless transactional experiences, enabling them to scale their businesses more efficiently and delight their buyers.
This is where we come in. Collectible items have complicated transactions because sellers typically have highly variable inventory across size, value, fragility, and geographies, oftentimes with complicated compliance issues on payment, tax, and customs. We solve this problem by accelerating digital transformation for the market, bringing together disparate parts of the fulfillment process including quoting, packing, shipping, insurance, and tracking, to deliver a frictionless, integrated experience that serves buyers and sellers alike.
Auction houses like Bonhams partner with us to bring their historically offline checkout and post-purchase experiences online to be automated from purchase to delivery, regardless if the item is a piece of sports memorabilia, a design object, or a painting. Marketplaces like Artsy are enabled to sell highly variable inventory from a globally distributed base of sellers and buyers. And new businesses like The Expert and JOOPITER are able to accelerate their launch process with our technology.
This next round of funding helps support our ability to accelerate this market’s e-commerce potential. We want to help our clients’ businesses grow faster by building technology to lower friction around transactions and compliance, expand our international footprint, and provide broader access to our products, technology, and APIs. We know that anyone can be a buyer and seller of collectible items, and our goal is to make it easier for all to quote, book, ship, insure, and track their items around the globe.
This was no easy feat, especially in this current fundraising environment. It’s no news that venture capital investments are down significantly, putting pressure on our ability to clearly articulate our product, the value we provide our clients, and the opportunity ahead. I think this round is a testament to our amazing team, the belief in our business, and the alignment around our vision. The last two years were full of uncertainty—yet our team managed to build, launch, and scale best-in-class technology with market leaders in our category. I am proud to work alongside each and every one of them every day, and know that the road ahead is full of growth for all of us.
If you are a merchant, marketplace, or auction house that is looking to sell digitally or improve your e-commerce experience, we’d love to show you how industry leaders have used Arta to increase their transactions and lower their operating costs all while expanding how they can sell, what they can sell, where they can sell, and who they can sell too. Learn more about Arta.
If you are ambitious, hard working, have an interest in e-commerce, collectibles, and post-purchase experiences, and you want to join a tenacious group of people solving hard problems, we’d love to talk to you. You can see our open roles here.
