Dealboard: Pete Davidson links with Manscaped, Flexe is a unicorn

Pete Davidson becomes a shareholder in Manscaped

Comedian and actor Pete Davidson will become a brand partner and shareholder in male grooming brand Manscaped through a four-year agreement announced on Monday.

With the announcement, the brand launched a new ad that features the SNL alum and “King of Staten Island” star testing out taglines.

“Both his sense of humor and sense of self closely fit our brand voice and values,” said Paul Tran, founder and CEO of Manscaped, in a statement. “One of those core values is to not take ourselves too seriously; it makes our brand approachable and allows for authentic connections with our fans.”

Davidson joins Zac Efron and Tim Tebow among celebrities signing on with digitally-native brands in recent weeks.

Terms of the investment deal were not disclosed.

Klarna's valuation drops in $800 million raise

Payments company Klarna announced Monday that it raised $800 million in new funding at a post-money valuation of $6.7 billion.

Participants in the round included Sequoia, the founders, Bestseller, Silver Lake, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It also attracted new investment from Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign fund of the UAE, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

The company will use the funding to continue expansion in the United States, where it says it has 30 million users.

The valuation was an 85% drop from a year ago, when the company was valued at $45.6 billion, according to CNBC.

In an announcement, Klarna pointed out the fact that it raised in a stock market downturn, and pointed out that it now has a similar valuation to other fintech companies. It also said its valuation has risen 219% since 2018.

The investment is of $800m in common equity and at a valuation 3x times higher than back in 2018, outperforming Klarna’s public peers for the same time period. Klarna has not been immune to the significant downdrafts of fintech stock in public markets. The company’s peers are down 80-90% vs peak valuations and consequently the adjustment in Klarna’s valuation is on par with its public peers from its $45.6bn valuation in June 2021.

Nevertheless, the round comes amid headwinds for the Buy Now Pay Later market, which has faced scrutiny on both the business model and regulatory fronts. Plus, Apple is getting ready to enter the space in the fall. For its part, Klarna laid off 10% of its workforce earlier this year.

In a Twitter thread detailing "facts that the media might omit," CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski tweeted, "As investor sentiment shifts it is time to return to profitability," adding, "What does not kill you makes you stronger." Full thread below:

Flexe becomes a unicorn

Logistics tech company Flexe raised $119 million in a Series D funding round. The Seattle-based company raised at a post-money valuation of more than $1 billion, meaning it now has unicorn status among startups.

The round included investments from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, as well as follow-on investments from Activate Capital, Madrona Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc. and Tiger Global.

Founded in 2013, Flexe combines enterprise technology and logistics expertise to provide brands and retailers with services in fulfillment, retail distribution and network capacity. The company says it works with six of the ten largest retailers and four of the five largest consumer packaged goods companies.

"Despite changing economic conditions, Flexe added nearly as many enterprise customers in the first six months of 2022 as it did all of last year and continues to see strong demand," said Karl Siebrecht, cofounder and CEO at Flexe, in a statement. "Our model allows organizations to scale fast in strong economic environments and reduce risk, capital investment and long-term commitments when they face uncertainty."

NielsenIQ and GfK combine consumer and retail measurement capabilities

A pair of global information services companies serving brands and retailers are joining together as one company.

NielsenIQ and GfK announced a merger that aims to create a leading provider of retail and consumer measurement, the companies announced on July 1.

By combining Nielsen’s cloud platform and omnichannel measurement technologies with GfK’s recently launched gfknewron platform, the companies will offer unique insights on consumer purchasing behavior. The deal also brings together two companies with a global footprint: GfK has a presence in 67 countries, while Nielsen is working in more than 90 countries.

With the deal, the majority shareholder of the company will be Advent, a private equity firm which acquired NielsenIQ from parent company Nielsen for $2.7 billion in 2021. Longtime GfK majority shareholder NIM will also retain a key stake, while private equity firm KKR will be a minority shareholder, the companies said

Terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this year, were not disclosed.

Essity acquires majority stake in Knix

Hygiene company Essity said it acquired a majority stake in the intimates brand Knix for $320 million.

With the deal, which values Knix at $400 million, Essity will own 80% of Knix. Joanna Griffiths, who founded Knix in 2013 and led it as CEO, will retain a 20% stake in the company and remain onboard as president.

Knix makes leakproof apparel for periods and incontinence, bras and other intimates products. The brand primarily sells through digital direct-to-consumer channels, and also has six retail stores.

Essity is looking to further boost its presence in the leakproof apparel market. It is already active in this space through ownership of feminine care brands Libresse, Bodyform, Saba and TOM Organic, as well as incontinence products through the TENA brand.

Shopify invests in Sanity

Soon after it rolled out 100 product updates, Shopify announced a new investment in a software company that will integrate with one of the key new releases.

Shopify is making a strategic investment for an undisclosed amount in Sanity, a headless content management system used by companies such as Unilever, Puma, National Geographic, and Condé Nast.

Along with the investment, Sanity is launching an app for Hydrogen, the headless commerce framework recently introduced by Shopify that forms a stack with another tool called Oxygen.

“This means merchants building completely custom storefronts on Shopify can also deploy immersive product stories with rich media, embed product content on external channels, enable 1-click ordering anywhere on a website, orchestrate promotions to email and social media, and much more,” a release announcing the deal states.

Shopify events app Evey acquired by Staytuned

Staytuned, a software company which provides revenue growth tools for DTC merchants, said it acquired Evey, a Shopify app for events management.

Founded in 2013 by former Shopify Director of Engineering Jason Normore, Evey offers merchants the ability to sell event tickets directly from a Shopfiy store, and provides a toolkit for event management processes like sales and check-in.

“We started Evey after personally hosting an event and hitting many roadblocks with the experience — from complicated set-up to inability to cross-sell our merchandise to taking over 1 month to get paid our ticket sales from our events platform. So, we took this frustration back to our computers and built Evey,” said Normore. “Given our depth of knowledge of Shopify, we purpose-built our app to work for Shopify merchants who wanted to set up and sell event tickets within seconds right within the Shopify platform.”

It will now join the fold at Staytuned, which currently serves more than 19,000 merchants through its collection of apps.

DEUNA raises $30 million for one-click checkout expansion in Latin America

Commerce operating system DEUNA announced that it has raised a total of $37 million, including a $30 million Series A. The funding will fuel the company’s expansion in Latin America.

The Series A round was led by Activant Capital, with participation from Valor Capital, Abstract Ventures, Acrew Capital, Upload Ventures, as well as founders from Plaid, Kavak, Jeeves, Xepelin, iFood, R2, and others.

The Silicon Valley-based company was founded in 2020 by Roberto Enrique Kafati Santos and Jose Maria Serrano, who are now emerging from stealth mode. The company said its platform provides one-click checkout, while integrating with payments providers and offering capabilities such as payment orchestration, payment processing, fraud prevention and life cycle management.

The company has added clients including KFC, Pappos and Dunkin Donuts.

“DEUNA’s one-click checkout will be a game changer for LatAm’s nearly $100 billion ecommerce market, helping address the region’s lower payment acceptance rates, higher fraud rates, and lower card usage rates,” said David Yang, partner at Activant Capital, in a statement. “We have been very impressed with Roberto and Jose Maria’s vision and experience as well as DEUNA’s traction to date.”

Toast acquires employee scheduling and communication platform Sling

Toast, a software platform designed to power restaurant operations, acquired Sling, a software company that provides employee scheduling, management and communication.

Building on a partnership that began in 2021, Sling will now be integrated with Toast’s payroll and team management products. The company’s technology includes features such as scheduling templates, in-app messaging and multi-location team management.

“By adding Sling to the Toast platform, we can provide a more comprehensive suite of team management products purpose-built for restaurants, from new hire onboarding to payroll processing, and now the ability to schedule shifts across the team,” said Toast COO Aman Narang, in a statement. “Our customers will benefit from the ability to simplify communication across their team, control their labor costs and efficiently manage their teams through one integrated platform.”

Here are a few more deals we covered in the last week:

• Amazon + Grubhub: A deal that will add Grubhub’s subscription service to Amazon Prime includes a stake in the meal delivery company’s parent for Amazon. We broke down what the deal means for both businesses, and food delivery as a whole.
• Authentic Brands Group settles with Bolt: Forever 21 owner Authentic Brands Group said it settled a high-profile lawsuit against fintech company Bolt, and will now become a shareholder in the one-click checkout company. It was a change in tone from Authentic Brands Group, which sued Bolt over failing to deliver technology it promised. Now, Bolt will be used by Forever 21 and Lucky Brands, with the two companies exploring options for expansion.
• Booze-free beverages: Just in time for summer refreshment, PrivCo’s Daily Stack runs down alcohol-free DTC beverage companies that recently attracted investment funding.