- Shogun — a leading e-commerce experience platform (eXP) — announced that it has raised a $35 million Series B round of funding led by Accel
Shogun — a leading e-commerce experience platform (eXP) — announced that it has raised a $35 million Series B round of funding led by Accel with participation from Initialized Capital, VMG Partners, and Y Combinator. Several prominent individual investors also joined the round, including Bryant Chou (CTO at Webflow), Mark Lavelle and Mark Lenhard (former CEO and SVP of Strategy at Magento, respectively), Alex O’Byrne (CEO of We Make Websites), Brian Grady (CEO of Gorilla Group), and Romain Lapeyre (CEO of Gorgias).
Through Shogun’s two core products Page Builder and Frontend, the company provides a way for merchants to codelessly create websites that load faster without compromising on features, quality, or SEO. And Shogun seamlessly integrates with leading e-commerce platforms and is trusted by over 15,000 e-commerce brands like Leesa, MVMT, Timbuk2, and Chubbies.
Shogun’s customers have used Shogun’s Page Builder to create over a million web pages and generate billions in sales. And the company has achieved a 4.8 rating across more than 2,100 reviews on the Shopify App Store and is featured in the exclusive Shopify Plus Certified App Program for large merchants.
Consumers and merchants have been flocking to e-commerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic, thus fueling $94 billion in extra online spending since March. And Shogun’s no-code solution has seen surging demand in recent months, with thousands of new customers and sales driven by the Shogun platform growing 182% year-over-year.
Integrated on top of platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, Magento, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shogun empowers brands and agencies to create unique e-commerce experiences by making it easier to build and optimize online storefronts in a no-code environment. And with the increase in demand from direct-to-consumer brands and traditionally offline brands needing to engage directly with their customers, Shogun will use the funding to scale their platform and further develop existing products, in addition to building out sales and marketing, executive and engineering teams.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re redefining what it means to have an exceptional online storefront. Advancements in mobile shopping have driven consumers’ expectations for an app-like shopping experience even when browsing the mobile web, but many merchants outside of the behemoths have historically lacked the necessary tools to compete. Shogun’s e-commerce experience platform is designed to help any merchant harness the power of the latest ‘headless commerce’ technology to quickly create flexible themes and memorable online experiences that directly boost the bottom line. By eliminating the technical hassle, they can focus on what really matters.”
— Finbarr Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Shogun
“With limited coding knowledge, we have relied on Shogun’s Page Builder to create and efficiently deploy on-the-fly updates to hundreds of pages, saving us an immense amount of time and money. We’ve decided to upgrade to their new product, Shogun Frontend, because of the incredible results e-commerce companies are seeing from increased page speed, as well as the enterprise-grade content management tools it provides.”
— Brian Hahn, co-founder of NOMAD
“Shogun is paving the way for the next generation of e-commerce experiences. The pandemic has accelerated the demand for amazing online shopping experiences, moving e-commerce from a necessary part of merchant strategy to a critical lifeline for businesses. To compete against industry titans like Amazon, merchants must deliver unique experiences, speed and ease-of-use that historically required a full team of engineers to deliver and maintain. As we’ve spoken to over 100 merchants, agency partners, and the major e-commerce platforms, the two problems we consistently heard merchants face were site speed and the need for more design control. Shogun was consistently highlighted as the leading solution to both of these problems. Being investors in two leading broader drag-and-drop web design platforms in Squarespace and Webflow, we are excited to partner with Shogun, the leading equivalent in e-commerce.”
— Ethan Choi, partner at Accel
