05 Mar Nike invests in Reflektion, a company that uses analytics to predict consumer shopping habits
Nike announced Tuesday it had taken a minority investment in California-based start-up Reflektion, an innovator in online retail predictive analytics.
Reflektion has raised $8 million in Series B funding through Intel Capital and Nike, tech publications reported Tuesday.
The startup plans to use the funding to beef up sales, marketing and to launch its e-commerce and business-intelligence products, TechCrunch.com reported.
“We’re impressed by Reflektion’s technology and the potential its personalization capabilities offer to further enhance our consumers’ online experience,” Christiana Shi, Nike direct to consumer president, said in a statement.
Reflektion has 20 employees. Including the new funding, it has raised $11.3 million since 2012, VentureBeat.com reported.
Nike.com is the company’s e-commerce business, operating in 24 countries, and its revenue grew more than 32 percent in the last fiscal year.
At its investor meeting last fall, Nike noted that it expects its e-commerce business to be one of the company’s biggest drivers of revenue growth in coming years and that its Nike.com revenues are expected to grow four-fold by May 31, 2017 — the end of that fiscal year.
At that meeting, Shi described “a new state-of-the-art e-commerce platform,” in which, over the past two years, Nike had combined its online presence into “one singular online destination.”
“It’s been a busy two years,” Shi said at the investor meeting.
The Reflektion investment marks another step in that journey for Nike.
Last October, the company announced it had taken a minority investment in California-based start-up Grabit Inc. At the time, Grabit announced it had secured Series A round funding.
Grabit makes automated products for the manufacturing and logistics industries, including grippers and fixtures, case and box handling grippers, and smart conveyors that can handle a wide variety of objects, shapes, sizes and materials.
— Allan Brettman