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Bluebell Group

21/F, Dorset House, Taikoo Place, 979 King's Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong

Overview

Since 1954, Bluebell has been successfully marketing and promoting imported products of the highest quality throughout Asia. Through experience, they have developed a deep understanding of how to market and promote these exclusive luxury products, and build them into powerful brands with large and longstanding recognition. These products include Fragrance and Beauty, Fashion and Accessories, Jewelry and Watches, Homeware, Tobacco, and Gourmet Food Over 100 brands in 8 countries with more than 480 point of sales and 2500 employees, Bluebell is a pioneer and leader in the Luxury and lifestyle brand distribution in Asia.

Total investments
3
Lead investments
1
Investments · 12mo
0
Active investors
5

Sector focus

  • Brand Marketing
  • Point of Sale
Visit website

Investment portfolio

  • Reflaunt

    Participated · Series A · Feb 2021

    Reflaunt is a London-based Resale-as-a-Service (RaaS) technology company enabling fashion brands and retailers to let customers easily resell or recycle past purchases directly on brands’ e-commerce sites. Items listed via Reflaunt are offered on more than 20 marketplaces across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia, reaching over 30 million secondhand buyers worldwide. The technology is designed to help brands increase sales and customer retention while providing them with data on the resale performance of their products. Marketplaces in Reflaunt’s network gain access to a large assortment of products sourced directly from brands and benefit from purchase traceability that mitigates counterfeit risk. The company secured $2.7m in pre-Series A funding and intends to use the proceeds to add talent to its technology and business development teams. Reflaunt previously raised an initial seed round led by Yellow Octopus Group alongside Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit and Swarovski Creative Director Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert.

  • Grana

    Participated · Seed · Feb 2016

    Grana is an online, own‑brand fashion retailer that sells exclusively through its website, operates an offline Hong Kong store and has run pop-up shops in four countries. The company sources fabric from Italy, Peru, China and elsewhere and offers about 3,000 SKUs across 90 styles and 10 fabrics for men and women. Grana ships to 12 countries, with the U.S. and Hong Kong as its largest markets (ahead of Australia and Singapore), and runs a single 18,000 square foot warehouse in Hong Kong where its 50-person team is based. The company avoids distributors and middlemen, ships direct to customers, and targets lower retail mark-ups (roughly 2–3x versus a typical 7–8x). Disclosed operating metrics include average growth of 15% month-on-month, single-digit return rates, and a flat collection fee for returns (US$10, SG$10 or HK$20). Planned product expansion includes sportswear, bags and accessories next year and shoes longer term, alongside geographic expansion including a planned China soft launch and greater U.S. focus. Grana designs wardrobe essentials in-house and sources fabrics directly from mills, offering items made from materials such as Peruvian Pima cotton, Mongolian cashmere, Chinese silk, Irish linen, Japanese denim and Italian merino. The company operates primarily online with a showroom-style "Fitting Room" footprint in cities including Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and San Francisco. Since its March 2014 beta (when it sold 2,000 Pima t-shirts in three weeks) Grana reports month-over-month sales increasing by 40% since its October 2014 launch. The U.S. market already represents 20% of Grana’s global sales, and the company has more than 40 employees in Hong Kong with recent hires in San Francisco. Future plans cited in the article include expanding shipping to new markets (including U.S. and China), launching new product categories such as leather goods, undergarments and activewear, opening additional Fitting Rooms and upgrading in-store technology. The brand emphasizes cutting traditional middlemen costs to deliver higher-quality fabrics at lower prices. GRANA sells wardrobe basics—T-shirts, tanks, jeans and other staples—made from premium fibers (pima cotton, cashmere, silk, Japanese denim) at low prices by working directly with mills and manufacturers. The company integrates logistics and its tech platform with DHL for global shipping and fulfillment, and operates an offline-to-online strategy with pop-up stores and plans for a permanent Hong Kong showroom. It launched initial inventory in April 2014 and now ships to eight countries, with most customers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and the U.S. GRANA has about 27 employees across its warehouse and pop-up operations and says repeat shoppers accounted for roughly one-third of revenue in the referenced month. The startup plans to use its latest funding to triple its range of styles, expand online marketing into more countries, open more pop-up stores, launch a new site integrated with social networks, and significantly expand its catalogue by year-end. GRANA is an online-only fashion brand that sources fabrics directly from mills to cut out middlemen and ships from a new warehouse in Hong Kong where its team is based. Its initial product was Peruvian pima cotton t-shirts, and during a beta launch the company sold out 2,000 shirts at $14 each. GRANA has a logistics partnership with DHL to offer discounted next-day delivery to Australia and currently ships to eight countries, with plans to expand to over 20. The company plans to broaden its assortment to include Japanese denim, French poplin shirts, Mongolian cashmere sweaters, English Oxford shirts, Irish linen shirts and USA twill chinos. The founder relocated from Australia to Hong Kong to access global manufacturing and logistics and has hired a team of seven to help scale the brand. Financially, GRANA recently closed a $1.1 million seed financing round and the founder had previously invested about $150,000 from earlier ventures.

Team

  • Ashley Micklewright

    President & CEO

  • Peter Goemans

    Founder

  • Benoit Lavaud

    Global Head of Digital

    LinkedIn
  • Pierre Buet

    Group Chief Financial Officer

    LinkedIn