Connect Ventures backs FinTech startup Purple Dot
London-based fashion tech company Purple Dot has announced a seed round of £1.35 million.
This was led by Connect Ventures, with support from AI Seed, Moxxie Ventures, Andy Chung and Philipp Moehring from AngelList, Vijay Pandurangan (ex-Twitter), Alex Roetter former SVP of Engineering at Twitter and the family office of Paul Forster, co-founder of Indeed.com.
Also of interest: Purple Dot adds Sandra Campos to its board
Founded in 2019 by Skyscanner employees Madeline Parra (CEO) and John Talbott (CTO), Purple Dot has developed a payment plugin that allows consumers to request a ‘worth the wait’ discounted price.
The company is currently working with a number of small boutiques across the country, and says that it is in discussions with several major UK and US high street brands.
The first major brand to partner with Purple Dot will be menswear retailer SPOKE. The integration is being tested and is likely to go live in November.
Parra comments: “When shopping online today, customers can either pay the retail price or walk away. When they do walk away, the item goes through the discounting process, becomes unprofitable for the merchant and is resigned to landfill.”
“This binary system isn’t working for anyone - the customer loses out on the item, because it may go out of stock in their size before they attempt to purchase it again, and the merchant loses the sale.”
“Purple Dot tackles this problem head on by providing a new way to shop, taking on unsustainable, unrelenting consumerism, poor pricing tactics and profit crunching sales at the same time,” she concludes.