RALEIGH – Hip eCommerce, a Raleigh startup looking to shake up the collectibles marketplace, has a fresh cash infusion of $5 million to help drive its efforts.

Austin, Texas-based Next Coast Ventures led the round.

The deal was announced Thursday morning.

Hip eCommerce

“With the modern day renaissance we’re seeing in collectibles, the time is right to bring collecting into the 21st century and beyond,” said Hip eCommerce CEO Mark Rosenberg.

“With this round, we’ve expanded our Board of Directors to include Mike Smerklo, David Kalt, the founder of Reverb.com, and Cotter Cunningham, the founder of RetailMeNot, who joins us as our new Executive Chair. With the team behind Next Coast Ventures, our current Director, Scot Wingo, and our new Board members, we have such a deep understanding of building marketplaces, that I honestly could not dream of better partners to move forward with and take Hip eCommerce to the next level.”

Hip eCommerce is a collectibles marketplace, connecting buyers and sellers through online centers such as HipStamp, HipPostcard and HipComic. The company launched in 2016 and reported it handles more than $18 million in gross merchandise value a year.

Its latest addition is Comic Book Image Recognition software, which the company says “allows Sellers to list comic books 4x faster, creating
entire item listings, complete with Volume, Issue Number, and more from just a single image.”

Rosenberg founded bidStart, another collectibles marketplace, in 2005, which was then sold to Stanley Gibbons.

Rosenberg then served as chief digital officer at Stanley Gibbons, before founding Hip eCommerce in August 2015.

Hip eCommerce raised $982,097 in equity in 2019, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

Back in 2018, the company also raised $400,000 in equity.

“Hip eCommerce fits squarely in our Reimaging Marketplaces and Retail Retold theme,” said Next Coast Ventures Co-Founder and Managing Director Michael Smerklo. “We see a potential to disrupt the large collectibles industry by bringing substantial offline inventory online to expand the market.

“Utilizing Mark’s deep domain expertise, the company is taking a vertical approach to niche collectible categories that have traditionally been underserved by larger horizontal marketplaces.”

Rosenberg founded bidStart, another collectibles marketplace, in 2005, which was then sold to Stanley Gibbons.

Rosenberg then served as chief digital officer at Stanley Gibbons, before founding Hip eCommerce in August 2015.

Hip eCommerce raised $982,097 in equity in 2019, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

Back in 2018, the company also raised $400,000 in equity.