Mini Exchange secures over $1M in seed funding

Screenshot of MiniExchange for Eid sale.

Mini Exchange,
an outlet for childrens retailers’ and an online marketplace for
parents to buy everything related to mums and kids needs, announced
today closing its seed fundraising round of over $1 million.

Founder Sarah Appleton, a British expat in Dubai who quit her
job at Deloitte and launched Mini Exchange early last year, told
Wamda during a call that she used convertible notes for her seed
round because the process was relatively quick.

Appleton said it took just three to four months
to close the round, which “puts us in a good position for our next
round”.

The investment came from angels in Europe and
the Middle East, and a small VC in Europe.

Appleton declined to share specific names, but
she did say that the the angel investors include the CFO of one of
the largest media companies in the region, a board member at a
large educational group, a former board member at GAP who is now a
professor at the London Business School, and someone from the
banking sector.

“We’ve created an informal board of advisors and
we meet regularly,” Appleton said. “This was of great support for
me.”

Her angel investors are experts in different
sectors (social, ecommerce, media, retail, legal, financial), and
her decision to involve Europeans was deliberate as “ecommerce is
more developed there than in the region”.

What changed and where is money
going?

Appleton has made some drastic changes in the
way Mini Exchange does business over the past year.

The platform initially encouraged parents to buy
and sell products, new or like-new. But to keep customers from
thinking that all products on Mini Exchange are second hand,
Appleton canceled the selling option.

Speed and scalability were additional
motivators.

“There is definitely a space for a second hand
products business in the region,” Appleton noted. “The service was
actually doing very well. But for us to scale quickly, it made more
sense to focus on one side of the business only.”

Drop Ship

She also reconfigured logistics to remove
barriers to scale.

When Mini Exchange first launched, the platform
stocked goods in warehouses before delivering orders to customers.
Appleton has since eliminated warehouses, and all goods today go
directly from seller to buyers.

To make this system work, the team integrated
Mini Exchange with retailers’ warehouses. When an order is
received, Fetchr picks up the product from the seller’s warehouse
and delivers it to the buyers.

“I want to keep the site as a tech focused platform,
ideally with no products ever touching us physically,”
Appleton said. “I think this makes for a nice business model that
is appealing to investors.”

Nevertheless, Appleton is using the investment
to expand her team and digital marketing. With 300 brands on the
site currently, the company is adding an average of two to three
new regional brands per day.

Additionally, Mini Exchange just started getting
international brands on board, which will give buyers from the
region the opportunity to buy products that were not available in
the region.

“Through its deal with UPS, Fetchr will also be
working on the global distribution,” she said.

Appleton said she is aware of the competition in
this sector, and is working to up her game as fast as
possible.

“I already see us as a tech only platform, a
real marketplace.”