Singapore's fashion brand Love, Bonito bags $50 mn in series C funding

Japanese retail firm Adastria and venture capital firm Ondine Capital also participated in the funding round. Love, Bonito is Primavera Capital’s first Southeast Asian investment.

Love, Bonito, one of Singapore’s biggest female fashion labels, first started in 2006 as a blogshop selling imported clothes. Since its rebranding in 2010 into a formal e-commerce platform, it has been designing and manufacturing its own clothing targeted at Asian women.

The brand moved into brick-and-mortar retail in 2017, opening of its first physical store at Somerset. This has since grown to 16 stores across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia. It also ships to 20 countries.

Love, Bonito’s chief executive Dione Song said the latest funds will be used to ‘double down’ on existing markets, as well as accelerate its global expansion into Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines and the United States. It has been three years since the firm’s series B financing, in which it raised $13 million.

“With this round of funding, we intend to enhance our customer experience, delight our community even further, expand as well in customer acquisition, category offerings and community outreach to increase our market share and market presence,” Song was quoted as saying by media reports from the country.

More physical stores are in the works as the brand still sees ‘a gap in the market’.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)