Marketplace For Customized Goods CustomMade Raises $4M From Google Ventures And Others

CustomMade , an online marketplace that connects shoppers with artisans to make customized goods, has raised $4 million in funding co-led by Google Ventures and Schooner Capital. Existing investors Launch Capital, Nextview Ventures, Andrew McCollum and First Round Capital all participated in the round. This brings CustomMade’s total funding to $8 million.

CustomMade allows customers who want to make custom products like jewelry and furniture post project proposals. The startup has built a community of makers that can browse through customer project requests and assign themselves to ones they are suited to. Makers can sign up for and build profiles on the site, which allows customers to browse through their portfolios.

Currently, the site has over 3,000 artisans and are seeing $500,000 worth of project requests per week. An average project receives three bids and is completed for $1,000. And transaction volume is growing at 50 percent each month.

The site aims to differentiate itself from artisan marketplace for homemade goods, Etsy, by focusing exclusively on items that have are customized or personalized. For example, you could have a piece of jewelry replicated, or a piece of furniture custom designed and created. And CustomMade’s price point is higher than Etsy.

Co-founder Seth Rosen explains that the site been around since 1996, but he and co-founder Mike Salguero bought CustomMade in 2009, and for the first two years, focused on adding high-quality makers and artisans to the platform.

“CustomMade as a platform is creating a fundamentally different retail paradigm,” said Google Ventures partner Rich Miner. “The model of giving consumers the ability to access, select and create custom work as an affordable and fun alternative to shopping at a retail store is a large opportunity and one that we are excited about as we continue to work with CustomMade.”

The new funding will be used to expand the site’s technology infrastructure.