CustomMade raises $18M for handmade, customized goods

CustomMade goes beyond "unique" to "one-of-a-kind"

Consumers are always looking for unique, one-of-a-kind items that no one else has as a way of fighting back against the Walmartization of the world. It used to be that you resisted the assembly-line, mass production of the world by shopping at thrift stores (and of course, “vintage” was the descriptor of choice for the most interesting and exclusive thrift store goods). That evolved into Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade and vintage items. CustomMade—a marketplace for custom made goods—is the obvious next step in that evolution.

CustomMade announced Tuesday that it has raised $18 million in a round of funding led by Atlas Ventures and existing investor Google Ventures, with help from Schooner Capital, Next View Ventures, First Round Capital, and Launch Capital. The new capital brings CustomMade’s total raised to $26 million to date.

We profiled CustomMade back in December, and since then the company has seen some explosive growth. The site now boasts 12,000 makers (woodworkers, metalworkers, jewelry makers, and more) and some 100,000 buyers. That’s up from 4,200 makers and 60,000 monthly visitors back in December. Last time I spoke with CEO Mile Salguero, CustomMade was doing $1 million per month in transactions. While he declined to say how much the company is doing in transactions now, he did say that revenue has doubled in the last six months.

“Simply stated, we're striking while the iron is hot,” said Salguero, in an email. “We raised funds because the company has doubled in size and revenue over the last six months and we want to keep up our momentum of team growth and fulfilling our mission of bringing custom to the masses.”

To recap, Salguero and business partner Seth Rosen bought the company in 2009, at which time the site had some 350 makers who paid to join, and it was only bringing in about $30,000 a year.

Shortly after Mike and business partner Seth Rosen bought the company, they flipped the model from an annual subscription model to a transactional one.  Now CustomMade.com makes money by taking a 10% cut of each transaction, and making that switch has made a huge difference in CustomMade’s community. 

To ramp things up, CustomMade recently hired Jim Haughwout as its new VP of engineering.

“Jim and his team have been laying the foundation for an incredible experience for our buyers and makers to co-create custom goods, which starts with inspiring and educating the buyer on custom, facilitating the matchmaking between buyers and makers, and giving a suite of tools to our makers to help them run their business,” said Salguero. “Ultimately, we want each and every consumer to know they can access quality, handmade, and completely personalized products of any kind, and we want our makers to grow their businesses and spend more time making the amazing custom projects you see on our website.”