Fancy’s New Funding Hopes To Buff Up Social Commerce

Social shopping platform Fancy said it has closed a new financing round that’s reportedly worth as much as $20 million, according to TechCrunch.

The New York-based startup, which hasn’t made a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since its last Series C round in September 2013, used a blog post on Tuesday (Feb. 10) to announce it has closed the Series D funding round. While not formally identifying the new investors — the post reads “Thank you @ArturoElias, @Carlos_Slim_D, CCC and the rest of our new investors for your support!” — the Twitter handles belong to Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim, America Movil executive (and Slim son-in-law) Arturo Elias Ayub, and Japanese retailer CCC.

According to the brief post, Fancy will use the new money to “continue to build out its technology platform and execute on new key strategic partnerships.” The post didn’t list the value of the funding round, but TechCrunch wrote that “we’ve heard the [$20 million] value from a very reliable source.” In previous rounds, Fancy has raised $104.4 million.

The post also thanks several existing investors, including French luxury-brand holding company Kering, General Catalyst Partners, American Express, hedge fund manager Jim Pallotta, Yahoo chairman Maynard Webb and Acadia Woods Partners.

Fancy, whose site is half photo-sharing, half social-commerce — users post photos, and then third-party vendors sell items that appear in the pictures — has shown up in recent months as one of Apple’s initial online partners for Apple Pay and as a poster child for Twitter’s “buy” button. The company formerly sold the merchandise itself, but last year year shifted to the third-party business model.

While Fancy didn’t specifically say whether it plans to make a bigger push in either Latin America or the Far East, the addition of non-U.S. investors probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Fancy’s website offers 32 languages besides English, and more than half the site’s visitors come from outside the U.S.