LoveCrafts is a London-based online community and marketplace for crafters that evolved from LoveKnitting and LoveCrochet into a combined LoveCrafts platform. The company operates a designer patterns marketplace (historically cited at 33k patterns) and provides craft materials and supplies across multiple categories. Founded in 2012, LoveCrafts reports over 1 million customers in 200 countries and employs about 140 staff across London, Kyiv and New York. It recently raised an additional $22M (approx €18.2M) from existing backers and took on capital alongside Silicon Valley debt provider TriplePoint Capital. The raise accompanies the acquisition of Massachusetts-based WEBS, which the company says makes it the market leader in North America in needlecraft. Proceeds are earmarked to expand into new craft categories and geographies as LoveCrafts aims to grow its share of a global craft market it values at over $100B. LoveCrafts operates an online ecosystem of content, commerce and community for makers, enabling project planning, purchasing supplies and sharing creations. Founded in 2012, the company is headquartered in Soho, London, with distribution centres in Missouri and Manchester. Its product set includes editorial content, marketplace commerce and community features designed to ignite inspiration and help makers manage projects. The company plans to use the new funding to scale operations and expand internationally. It will invest in its platform technology to improve user connections and to launch additional crafting sites. LoveCrafts completed a LoveCrafts operates a combined social platform, designer marketplace and e-commerce storefront with dedicated sites for knitting (LoveKnitting.com) and crochet (LoveCrochet.com). The platform lets makers find inspiration, buy designs and purchase the supplies and equipment needed to complete projects. Revenue is generated from sales of designs on the designer marketplace and from the sale of supplies, which are stocked in warehouses in the U.S. and Europe serving makers in over 100 countries. The company says it will use new capital to invest in technology and to grow revenue, naming the U.S. and German markets specifically. LoveCrafts is London-headquartered and has raised $30 million in total to date. It aims to capture a meaningful share of the estimated $100 billion crafts industry by growing its global community of makers. LoveCrafts runs online marketplaces for crafters, operating loveknitting.com and offering yarn, needles, patterns, books and accessories. The company has expanded via acquisition of Yarnmarket.com (USA) and the launch of loveknitting.de. It plans to unveil a new marketplace, LoveCrochet, in April 2015 and intends to use new funding to develop the platform and scale globally. LoveCrafts was co-founded in 2012 by Edward Griffith, Nigel Whiteoak and Cherry Freeman and is based in London, UK. The company has previously raised seed funding from True Capital and Venrex and is actively hiring. Its current financing round provides capital to support product development and international growth.

Total raised

$83M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Feb 2021