Provo-based Clarke Capital Partners has joined forces with digital marketing agency, Ikonifi of Sandy to purchase the ssets of Brandless Inc., an online retailer that shut down in February when it ran into challenges with profitability and mounting troubles with distressed financial partners.
The partnership intends to aggressively relaunch Brandless.com, the “community-driven, direct-to-consumer company which offered a curated assortment of high-quality, fairly priced products,” officers of the company said. They said the products will again be available to order online in the near future.
Brandless shot to Internet prominence in 2018 under the leadership of Tina Sharkey and achieved a $500 million valuation, having received almost $300 million in investments from sources including SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, NEA, Redpoint Ventures, GV and Sherpa Capital.
“Brandless was re-imagining what it meant to be a ‘brand’ in the 21st century by democratizing access to high-quality products at simple, fair prices, through cutting out the middleman and eliminating unnecessary markups,” the new owners said in a release. “Under an improved capital structure, matched with responsible pricing models and the ongoing recruitment of a world-class team, Brandless 2.0 is now well-suited to carry on the brand that millions of Americans love.”
“Brandless was built to address the serious challenges that exist in the consumer products market,” said Ryan Treft, newly appointed CEO of Brandless and partner at Ikonifi. “Customers today still pay an enormous ‘BrandTax,’ but we’re out to prove that healthy doesn’t have to be expensive. Quality goods and fair prices don’t have to live in separate worlds.”
Clarke Capital Partners founder, James Clarke, said, “We had been rooting for the Brandless team, having fallen in love with their highest-quality product lines, but found ourselves deeply saddened to learn of the company’s closing. So when the opportunity was brought to us to join with Ikonifi’s Ryan Treft and Brady Hansen to acquire the assets, we wasted no time as we worked to ensure the future of what Brandless, and its ‘brand promise,’ will continue to be to its millions of loyal customers.”
Clarke will join the Brandless board as its chairman, along with Clarke Capital’s James Harrison.