Clozette announced that it had secured US$10 million in Series C funding from Cool Japan Fund, a public-private fund under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI) that aims to promote Japanese products and services.
Founded in 2010, Clozette is a company that focuses on editorial and user-generated content for beauty, fashion, travel, and wellness. With more than 90 employees in Southeast Asia and Japan, Clozette generates income by producing and distributing content for lifestyle brands. The company works with its network of content creators consist of more than 3,500 creators and talents with a combined social reach of more than 600 million.
The startup currently runs three sites, focusing on Southeast Asia, Japan, and Indonesia respectively. It also worked with notable brands including Estee Lauder, Shiseido, Charles & Keith, Procter & Gamble, among others.
Clozette plans to use most of the investments to scale its data-driven content and analytics platform and expand into new markets starting with Thailand. The other part of the investment will be used for the creation of a multi-lingual ‘Cool Japan Ecosystem’ that is set to launch in mid-2019. This ecosystem will enable the discovery of actionable and shoppable ‘cool’ content about Japan.