Forum Brands Secures $27M in Equity Funding to Scale its Technology-First E-Commerce Acquisition Platform

New York, New York -- (June 29, 2021) -- Forum Brands today announced a new round of equity funding to scale the world’s most sophisticated, technology-driven e-commerce acquisition platform. The $27M round is led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors NFX and Concrete Rose. Forum’s platform merges proprietary technology with deep e-commerce and consumer investing knowledge to rapidly identify, acquire and scale successful third-party Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) businesses into household brands. 

Forum Brands is led by co-founders and co-CEOs Brenton Howland and Ruben Amar, as well as COO Alex Kopco. With vast experience executing large scale mergers and acquisitions, developing marketplace and brand management strategies through leadership positions at Amazon and other Fortune 500 companies, Forum Brands’ team is uniquely positioned to continue to address challenges that FBA entrepreneurs face as e-commerce revenues are projected to skyrocket to 6.5 trillion dollars by 2022. 

“The Forum leadership team knows what it takes to build leading brands both on and beyond Amazon.com,” said Stew Campbell, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “The experience the leadership team brings to the table sets them apart, and we’re excited to support the company as they continue building a first-of-its-kind tech stack to scale promising brands into omni-channel leaders in their respective categories.” 

Amazon marketplace sellers alone sold an additional $95 billion worth of products in 2020 than they did in 2019, totaling $295 billion. While this is good news for the industry, many micro-brand founders are scrambling to scale FBA businesses while bleeding operational efficiencies as demand soars due to constraints like lack of time, expertise and liquidity options required to scale their otherwise healthy businesses.

Composed of ex-Amazon technologists and a former Head of Amazon’s Third-Party Marketplace, Forum Brands’ leadership team saw a market opportunity to do with data what the world’s largest CPGs have done for generations: innovate through acquisition. The company will continue to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars in capital over the next several years to acquire e-commerce businesses built by the most innovative entrepreneurs within consumer products categories.

”Raising significant pools of capital dedicated to acquisitions has become table stakes in this growing Amazon ecosystem,” said Brenton Howland, co-founder of Forum Brands. “We’re actively deploying hundreds of millions in capital to acquire brands built by outstanding entrepreneurs, and in parallel, are investing behind technology and data science to scale the growth of our brands. We’re building first-of-its-kind technology tools for M&A and e-commerce operations that solve for the current unmet needs within our industry.”

Forum Brands solves scaling and operational challenges for founders of promising FBA companies via its proprietary “SEAL” acquisition process:

• Source: Forum’s M&A team can contact millions of brand owners in just three clicks. The company’s proprietary technology combines advanced algorithms and over 60 million data points to populate brand information into a central platform in real-time, instantly scoring brands and generating accurate financial metrics.

• Evaluate: Forum knows which brands meet its acquisition requirements before ever making contact with brand owners. The decision to acquire comes within 48 hours: once terms are agreed-upon, entrepreneurs get paid in 30 days or less for their brand, with additional income benefits through post-acquisition partnerships. 

• Accelerate: Forum’s applications leverage analytics to push recommendations to drive step-change growth and financial performance for brands. Brand builders know exactly what levers to prioritize, and within a high degree of confidence, size their financial upside.

• Lead: Forum’s multi-channel experience and set of playbooks blend deep market and customer data to position brands for long-term category leadership.

“Within 48 hours, Forum came to us with a transformational operating plan and powerful technology tools to take our brand to the next level,” said Daniel Westerheim, Founder of Tough Cover. “We evaluated over a dozen buyers but none came close to the depth of their direct Amazon, e-commerce, and acquisition experience. We knew we were in highly capable hands, and more importantly, that our products would find fresh audiences in homes around the world to span the test of time.”

Though identifying and scaling underserved brands in the Amazon ecosystem is a key driver for Forum Brands, the company’s model is platform agnostic.  

”We’re focused on building a foundation for brands that meet consumers everywhere they are,” said Co-Founder Ruben Amar. “Amazon has an incredible ecosystem of entrepreneurs – over 60,000 that meet our acquisition criteria, but viewing their potential purely on Amazon is short-term and short-sighted thinking. Our technology, strategic focus, and team has all been carefully curated with an eye to long-term scale.”

To get in touch and to learn more, visit https://www.forumbrands.com/.  

About Forum Brands

Forum Brands is the world’s most advanced data-driven Amazon business acquisition platform. Using proprietary technology, Forum provides third-party FBAs with customized acquisition opportunities via its proprietary SEAL (Source, Evaluate, Accelerate, Lead) system. The team brings expertise from Amazon, Target.com, McKinsey, TA Associates, Cove Hill Partners and more. Forum Brands is backed by leading investors including Norwest Venture Partners, NFX, Architect Capital, and Concrete Rose, and is headquartered in New York, New York. For more information, please visit forumbrands.com.  

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Kayla Abbassi

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