04 March 2020

Little Cigogne x ACG Management - Calao Finance - Business Angels

Fund raising

Secteur Consumer Products & Retail

Little Cigogne holds a second financing round with ACG Management. Calao Finance and historical business angels reinvest.

Client Little Cigogne

Founded in 2013 by Mathieu Waltzer, Little Cigogne is reinventing the shopping experience for children (0 - 14 years old) through a service that offers personalised trunks of ready-to-wear clothing tailored to the child’s needs and parents’ preferences. After indicating their clothing preferences, parents can subscribe and receive these personalised trunks of clothing and accessories that their children can try on right in their home. They keep and pay only for what they like. Available on a subscription or occasional basis, the company is experiencing strong growth, supported by subscriptions and a high re-order rate. With a customer-experience and product-based strategy, Little Cigogne plans to double its turnover in 2020, after already increasing its revenue by 2.5 times between 2018 and 2019.

Contrepartie ACG Management

ACG Management, a specialist in investing in unlisted French SMEs, has been supporting companies at all stages of their development (seed, innovation capital, development and buyout capital) for 20 years. The company operates in various promising sectors to promote the emergence of tomorrow’s talents. It offers a wide range of investment vehicles on a managed or advisory basis, including retail funds (FCPI innovation funds, FIP professional investment funds) and funds designed for professional investors. ACG Management is one of the major players in the market, thanks to a unique positioning that combines independence, innovation, expertise and proximity with, at 31/12/2019: €956 million raised, on a managed or advisory basis, since its creation, 40,000 private or institutional investors in 69 private equity vehicles, 391 companies financed since its creation, a multi-disciplinary team of 30 employees, including 14 investment professionals based in Marseille, Ajaccio, Bastia and St Denis de La Réunion.

Contrepartie Calao Finance

Calao Finance is an independent private equity management company authorised by the French financial markets authority (Autorité des Marchés Financiers) that offers a range of private equity investment solutions (FCPI innovation funds, FIP professional investment funds, investment advice, FCPR venture capital mutual funds, FPCI professional private equity funds, other AIFs, 150-0 b ter). Founded and managed by Eric Gaillat and Rodolphe Herbelin, the company employs some 20 investment professionals and industry experts. The funds advised or managed by Calao Finance help to finance nearly 80 French SMEs in two main theme-based categories: lifestyle, digital media and luxury, on the one hand, and strategic activities and energy efficiency, on the other. Calao Finance received the 2014 Morningstar "Emerging Manager Best Practices" award in the real assets/private equity category.

After an initial round of funding from Calao Finance in 2016, the personalised trunks for children service is raising a new amount of €2.2 million from ACG Management, lead. The historical investors, including Calao Finance, are participating in the financing round.

Founded in 2013 by Mathieu Waltzer, Little Cigogne is reinventing the shopping experience for children (0 – 14 years old) through a service that offers personalised trunks of ready-to-wear clothing tailored to the child’s needs and parents’ preferences.

After indicating their clothing preferences, parents can subscribe and receive these personalised trunks of clothing and accessories that their children can try on right in their home. They keep and pay only for what they like.

Available on a subscription or occasional basis, the company is experiencing strong growth, supported by subscriptions and a high re-order rate. With a customer-experience and product-based strategy, Little Cigogne plans to double its turnover in 2020, after already increasing its revenue by 2.5 times between 2018 and 2019.

Little Cigogne collects and processes a large amount of information about its customers (preferences, feedback, etc.) so as to offer them the best buying experience and supply its data platform.

Little Cigogne develops its own products based on customer data and also relies on a few partner brands such as Petit Bateau, Monoprix and the Bestseller group.

The funds raised will enable Little Cigogne to take its development to the next level and meet strong demand from several European countries for this type of service. To do so, the group plans to bolster its IT and marketing teams in order to further develop its platform, expand its own-brand offering and extend its service internationally. The goal is to become the European leader in personalised shopping for children.