Walker & Company Brands, the startup creating health and beauty products for people of color, has landed a Series B investment of $24 million led by Institutional Venture Partners. The company also announced that its flagship brand Bevel, which consists of a razor and other shaving accessories, will be sold on Target.com and in some Target stores starting in 2016. Bevel products will be sold through Target as a kit, and also a la carte for the first time.
Walker & Company Raises $24 Million, Will Sell Its Bevel Razors in Target Stores
Institutional Venture Partners led the round. Celebs like Magic Johnson and John Legend also contributed funds.
Bevel
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
The Bevel-Target tie-up is the latest example of an e-commerce brand looking to physical retail for distribution and highlights the growing importance of brick-and-mortar stores for digital-first brands that want to become household names. Founder and CEO Tristan Walker attracted a bunch of celebrity investors in this round, including Magic Johnson, John Legend and current NBA players Andre Iguodala and Harrison Barnes. The company said the new funds will be used in part to develop new products.
Walker first unveiled Walker & Company and Bevel in late 2013 and said the goal was to attack health and beauty problems like razor bumps that he and other people of color encounter.
“When I thought about the shaving business, I thought about my own story,” he said at the time. “Every encounter I’ve had [with] shaving and hair removal has sucked. The first time I shaved with a multi-blade razor, I woke up the following morning completely broken out, and formed the opinion then that all razors are the plague.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
