NEW YORK & MANCHESTER, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Castore, a leading premium performance sportswear brand and technology-enabled, end-to-end digital platform for global sports teams, today announced it has secured a significant growth investment in a funding round led by Raine Partners, The Raine Group’s flagship growth equity fund. The Raine Group is a leading global strategic advisory and investment firm specialized in media, entertainment and sports. Hanaco Ventures and Felix Capital also participated in the investment through their respective growth funds.
The £145 million investment round will support Castore’s efforts to continue to disrupt the premium sportswear market and global team sports landscape. Castore is customer-obsessed and this will allow it to continue to win new relationships with leading sports franchises across the world, supplying its partners with a full range of high-quality merchandise while also providing them with the data and tools to deepen engagement with their fans. In addition, the capital raise will enable Castore to further develop the breadth and reach of its mainline product range as the company continues on a path to become the UK’s leading sports and athleisure brand. Castore will also continue to invest in its people and infrastructure systems, so they are able to support the business’ growth ambitions, enhancing its supply chain and data analytics capabilities.
Founded in Liverpool in 2016 by brothers, Tom and Phil Beahon, Castore’s business model combines a premium performance apparel brand with a vertically integrated digital commerce platform and supply chain to deliver a comprehensive service offering to top sports teams and leagues. To date, Castore has partnered with 50 franchises globally, catering to a massive end-market that is highly underserved, unsatisfied and thirsty for innovation – including those in Football, Tennis, Motorsports, Rugby and Cricket. The business continues to record strong growth and is on track to achieve record revenues and profits in 2023.
“We are delighted to have secured the backing of highly reputable equity partners that will add significant value to all aspects of Castore’s business model – our team relationships, our sportswear brand and our omni-channel retail operations. We are confident these are the right investors to take us to the next stage of our growth, who share our passion for high quality sports apparel, and, in addition to capital, will bring expertise and access to new markets,” said Tom and Phil Beahon, Founders of Castore.
Castore’s Founders continued, "This investment will give us the financial firepower to invest in our supply chain and enhance our data analytics capabilities. There is huge demand out there for Castore and this will enable us to continue to deliver great products, service and choice to our sports industry partners and consumers, and to take on the established players in the global sports apparel market. We are very proud of the progress made, but we – and the full Castore team - are just getting started!”
Jason Schretter, Partner of The Raine Group, added “Castore is an insurgent sportswear brand that sits at the intersection of sports, premium brands, data analytics and e-commerce. Raine and our fellow coinvestors’ deep expertise across these industries helped us immediately understand the impact Castore can have on its clients. Sports teams and leagues are among the most cherished brands in the world. They deserve comprehensive and bespoke solutions to help them better connect, engage and monetize their global fan bases. Castore’s differentiated combination of high-quality merchandise and data-driven technology solutions is the answer sports franchises need to unlock this massive opportunity. We look forward to working with Tom, Phil and the entire Castore team to extend their connectivity to the world of sports.”
Rothschild & Co is acting as the sole financial adviser to Castore on this transaction. Allen & Overy and Addleshaw Goddard are legal advisors to Castore. Latham and Watkins LLP acted as legal advisor to Raine.
About Castore
Castore is a premium sportswear brand and end-to-end digital retailing platform for global sports teams. Castore’s Team Sports platform manages the full omni-channel retailing (online, offline, event-based) operations for selected partners and has a proven approach for growing revenues through product quality, supply chain innovation and fan engagement. Team Sports partners include McLaren F1; Oracle Red Bull Racing; England Cricket Board, Glasgow Rangers, Bayer Leverkusen, Feyenoord, Sevilla FC, Athletic Club (Bilbao), Saracens Rugby and Republic of Ireland Football. Castore’s Mainline brand crafts high-quality sportswear using advanced materials and precision engineering designed to improve athlete performance.
About The Raine Group
The Raine Group is a leading global TMT merchant bank with an integrated focus on both advisory and principal investment in the global TMT ecosystem. Founded in 2009, Raine has advised on some of the largest, most impactful and most cutting-edge transactions in the history of TMT and has leveraged that same breadth and depth of intelligence to be an active, strategic value-add growth and venture capital investor. Based in New York, Raine has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Mumbai, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. For more information, including a complete list of transactions, please visit raine.com
About Hanaco Ventures
Hanaco is a NY and Tel Aviv based multi-stage investment firm investing through two separate and synergistic strategies, early-stage and growth/pre-IPO. Based in New York and Tel Aviv, Hanaco seeks to invest in the world's best entrepreneurs building technology-enabled category leading businesses across the US, Europe and Israel. Hanaco’s portfolio includes companies such as Divvy, Yotpo, Lemonade Insurance, AmWell, Moovit, Via, Digital Ocean, and RedefineMeat. www.hanacovc.com
About Felix Capital
Felix Capital is a London-based venture capital firm, operating at the intersection of technology and creativity. The firm’s mission is to be a partner of choice for entrepreneurs with big ideas, and help them build brands that shape our culture and have a positive impact on the world. Illustrative investments in Europe and North America include: Farfetch, an online marketplace for the fashion and luxury (now exited); Moonbug, a media platform for kids;, AMI, a luxury fashion brand; Mirakl, a Saas platform for marketplaces; HungryPanda, a food delivery business for the Chinese community and Mejuri, a modern jewellery brand.
