Chicago startup raises $50M to help e-commerce brands leap to brick and mortar

A Chicago-based startup that helps e-commerce companies open brick and mortar locations raised $50 million in venture capital funding.

Leap, founded in 2018 by Amish Tolia and Jared Golden, is betting that retail will make a comeback despite lingering effects of the pandemic. It’s helped 30 brands open 50 stores across Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to Crain’s.

“It became pretty clear to us early on into the pandemic that actually, at some point, there would be an inflection point where things would kind of restore a bit and brands couldn’t just keep scaling on e-commerce,” Tolia told Crain’s.

Earlier this month, the Chicago Loop Alliance released a report that found downtown foot traffic was on the rise in December despite a surge of Omicron cases, a trend that suggests the worst may be over for retailers.

Leap, which works with brands such as Something Navy, Lunya and Rind Concierge, connects brands with a storefront, a custom store design and workers. The average client stays in a space for two years and pays Leap daily operating fees, Tolia told Crain’s. In 2021, the company expanded to 50 stores from 12.
Locally, A Pea in the Pod in Bucktown, Public Rec in the West Loop and UpWest in Oak Brook have used Leap.

Leap employs 300 people, including 80 full-time corporate staff split between New York and Chicago. The company has raised about $70 million so far. Leap’s Series B financing round was led by Chicago-based BAM Elevate, the private investment division of Balyasny Asset Management.

Real estate technology companies raised a record $32 billion in venture capital funding in 2021, according to a Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation report cited by Crain’s. Other Chicago-based real estate startups that raised money recently include Cohesion, which makes building management software.

[Crain’s] – Harrison Connery