Asian Goods E-tailer Raises $10 Million

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Alex Zhou couldn’t access any of his favorite hometown spices while studying at the University of Kansas, so the Chinese student built a company to satisfy his cravings.

Four years later, his City of Industry-based Yamibuy has cooked up $10 million in a Series A round led by GGV Capital of Beijing.

“After I graduated from Kansas, I noticed there was a big Asian population in Los Angeles and many Asian superstores for immigrants to get the products,” said Zhou, Yamibuy’s founder and chief executive. “So, I thought, maybe I could start an e-commerce site to help people in Kansas get the products.”

Yamibuy, which launched in 2013, serves as an online marketplace for American consumers looking to buy Asian goods such as snacks, beauty products, health supplements and home appliances. It has 510,000 registered customers and about 15,000 products.

“We’re going to use the $10 million to expand our operations and expand into new countries, as well as customers,” Zhou said. “We see much opportunity in Canada.”

Zhou said Yamibuy is in the midst of opening a new warehouse in New Jersey and said he wants to expand the company’s physical footprint north of the border as well. He expects the East Coast facility to shorten delivery times to one to three days.

Beijing-based venture capital firms New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. and K2VC participated in the round.

Zheng Zhao, New Oriental’s general manager of investment business, said he was impressed by Yamibuy’s scale.

“Yamibuy’s growing customer base, mature supply chain and reduced procurement costs are core competencies that have enabled the company’s impressive growth over the past four years,” Zhao said.

Yamibuy is able to keep consumer costs low by shipping goods directly from China. Customers earn free shipping on orders over $49.

Zhou said he expects Yamibuy to exceed $100 million in revenue this year, double the amount he said it generated in 2016.

Korean expansion

Yamibuy ships most of its products from China, but offers goods from South Korea and Japan as well.

The e-commerce site announced a partnership with Seoul, South Korea-based food supplier Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp., known as aT, on June 28. The collaboration is expected to increase Yamibuy’s revenue from Korean goods to $20 million in 2017 – a 163 percent increase compared to 2016 – with greater growth anticipated in 2018, according to a company statement.

Yamibuy has roughly 200 employees in Los Angeles and about 70 to 80 working in China.

– Natalie Hoberman

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