DST leads Series B for China cross-border brand Cider

Cider has closed four rounds since its inception one year ago. Andreessen Horowitz and IDG Capital led a seed round in September last year, which also featured Chinese investors Chuxin Capital, Decent Capital, and Frees Fund. This was followed by a pre-Series A led by MSA Capital in December. DST and Andreessen Horowitz led a Series A in May this year, according to a statement.

Cider’s founder Chen Wang was an investor at KKR and IDG before he co-founded China’s largest fashion rental platform Yiersan, which announced its bankruptcy last month.

Cider focuses on low-priced and fashionable women’s clothing. It has about one billion exposures on social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and accumulated two million followers across 100 countries. Manufacturing operations are based in Guangzhou, and there are additional offices in Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, London, Seoul, and Brisbane.

The company claims to have two core competitiveness. The first is branding and content, where it has built a community on major social platforms to connect with its customers. Second is logistics, where it has built a closed-loop supply chain leveraging artificial intelligence to absorb customer feedback and predict the sales volume.

User feedback data collected in the supply chain is said to help designers create best-sellers. The average design, proofing, and production cycle of new products is seven days.

The new capital will be applied to branding and technology as well as manufacturing upgrades through the construction of smart factories.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• e-commerce
• DST Advisors
• Andreessen Horowitz
• Greenoaks Capital