Genflow, a five-year-old agency that helps influencers build their own direct-to-consumer brands, gated content services, membership clubs, and mobile apps, has raised $11 million in funding.
Genflow says it has built $100 million worth of brands to date with the likes of Summer McKeen, Jordyn Woods (workout platform FrstPlace), Corinna Kopf, Gregg and Charley Sulkin (at-home fitness program Circuit Workit, pictured above), and more. The company says it specializes in apparel, fitness, nutrition, and beauty ventures — while providing all back-end infrastructure, including design, manufacturing, development, content, strategy, and marketing.
The company’s first funding round was led by U.K.-based venture capital firm BGF, Techcrunch reports, and will be harnessed to further scale Genflow’s brand offerings as well as to fuel international expansion. Genflow, which was founded by the British entrepreneur Shan Hanif, currently has offices in London and Los Angeles.
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Genflow also operates proprietary software called Genlytics that it says processes an influencer’s analytics and past brand partnerships to determine what type of brand launch would be most successful, as well as how many products they could potentially move.
“What’s interesting is that traditionally in startups you find a problem, get a team, some funding, then try to find customers,” Hanif tells Techcrunch. “What we have invented is the audience-first approach, where we already have the audience and now just need the right products and it’s instantly a success. The metrics that I see for our brands are not normal: conversion rates that are five to 30%, 20% repeat purchase buys, and around 6:1 return on Facebook ads.”
Each brand that it has launched to date is profitable and growing on a year-over-year basis, Hanif said.
