Vancouver’s Blanka has raised a $2.7 million seed funding round for its private label beauty and wellness platform.
Founded in 2021 by Kaylee Astle (pictured below), Doug Long, and Adam Chuntz, Blanka allows anyone to launch a new beauty brand in under an hour, for less than $200.
Blanka is powering and accelerating the disruption of the beauty and wellness industry, by doing away with high manufacturing minimums, long production lead times, and analogue order forms.
“The industry has seen a fundamental shift in the last decade, from being owned by a few global players towards a more diverse set of direct-to-consumer brands. Independent brands have now captured more than 25% of the global beauty industry,” says Kaylee Astle, Co-founder and CEO of Blanka, who experienced the challenges of trying to launch her own beauty brand.
“This has created a wave of entrepreneurs, content creators and beauty professionals all hungry to enter the market with their own brand, but there hasn’t been anything to support them – until now.”
Available to anyone with an idea, Blanka’s platform is a one-stop-shop, from product procurement, to personalization, all the way to fulfillment. Supporting both established and nascent brands, Blanka sources and customizes high-quality North American-made beauty and wellness products.
“The beauty industry continues to evolve, but one thing that has remained constant is the market’s exponential growth over the years, even amidst economic cycles. The success of this fundraising round, especially in this market, underscores that the beauty industry is bulletproof,” said Glenn Baptiste, former L’Oréal executive and advisor to Blanka. “Blanka’s platform will unlock faster innovation for brands at all sizes. I’m excited about what’s to come – for both Blanka and what this means for the beauty industry broadly.”
The investment comes after 12 months of steady growth for Blanka, which now has thousands of brands subscribed to the platform, fuelled entirely by organic marketing and strategic integrations with partners like Shopify.
The oversubscribed round was led by Dundee Venture Capital, with participation from Storytime Capital, Disruption Ventures and other notable investors including Fatima Yusuf, former executive at Shopify, and Manica Blain, a consumer-focused investor and Founder of Top Knot Ventures.
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