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Originally Posted On: https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/inno/stories/fundings/2024/10/07/philadelphia-alloy-grubhub-investor-seed.html
Bucks County startup Alloy lands investment from GrubHub co-founder
Newtown-based startup Alloy, a digital platform for appraising and selling jewelry, has raised $1.5 million in funding from a collection of investors that includes one of GrubHub‘s co-founders.
Alloy’s seed round was led by Chicago-based 11 Tribes Ventures with participation from Unity Holdings and Paul Appelbaum, the co-founder of Grubhub Seamless. Founded in June 2023, the Bucks County company has seen about 100% growth quarter over quarter and is angling to hit $6 million in revenue in 2024 as it expands operations.
Alloy mails appraisal kits to customers, evaluates jewelry items and makes offers for the pieces. Alloy has contracts with two of the largest precious metal refineries in the U.S. that then purchase the jewelry in bulk. The startup was launched in response to founder and CEO Brandon Aversano’s troubling experience trying to trade in jewelry for cash on Jeweler’s Row in Philadelphia and is meant to be a more tech-forward, efficient way to navigate the process. Last year, Alloy raised $800,000 in a pre-seed round.
Thus far, the company has sent out 10,000 appraisal kits in just over a year with an average order value over $1,000, according to Aversano.
Aversano said the company has tripled its headcount this year, increasing from five to 15 employees with plans to get to about 20 in the next few months. The company also expects to move into a more than 3,000-square-foot facility in Newtown by the end of the year after outgrowing its existing office space. The new seed capital will mainly go toward increasing Alloy’s real estate footprint and hiring in the marketing and operations departments as it looks to scale.
The road to securing the investment wasn’t an easy one for Aversano, who said he met with about a hundred venture capital firms to attract investors in a down market.
“It was perhaps the three most difficult months or four months that I’ve had in the course of the business so far,” said Aversano, who previously held positions at Deloitte, JetBlue Airways and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Alloy functions in a jewelry space that most venture capital firms aren’t familiar with, according to Aversano, which made some potential investors hesitant. If all goes according to plan, it may be the last time he needs to navigate the venture capital industry.
“We should by December, but maybe January, go cash positive, honestly,” he said. “The goal is to be 100% in control of our own destiny. Our goal is hopefully not to raise again unless there is a capital-intensive, very specific project that we’re looking to execute.”
Aversano said he’s also in talks with major players in the jewelry industry on commercial partnerships, but he declined to disclose which companies.
Alloy is projecting it will hit $18 million in revenue in 2025. Next for Alloy is a plan to turn the platform into a two-way marketplace where users can both trade in and buy jewelry. Aversano said the gold-buying industry could be a billion-dollar marketplace itself, so Alloy has been focused on conquering that before expanding its offerings.
