New York-based resale platform Grailed has announced it plans to shutter Heroine, a site geared towards women that was launched in 2017. Indicating the site wasn’t able to create a stand alone community, a message on Heroine read, “There are more women on Grailed than on Heroine, with 68 percent of the Heroine community already active on both platforms. As the resale landscape continues to evolve, we see a need to invest more deeply in building out first-in-class tools and user experiences under one unified platform. With this in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to close Heroine.”
According to the site, Heroine will be available until November 9, 2021. After that, buyers won’t be able to make new purchases or offers. The site and the app will cease to be available on December 9th.
Within the streetwear space, men’s brands have struggled to extend their concepts to women. Not only is the female fashion media, retail and brand space extremely crowded, streetwear brands’ efforts to market to women through the same channels used to reach men have missed the mark.
Grailed was co-founded in 2013 by current CEO Arun Gupta, who saw a need for a resale platform serving the then burgeoning men’s streetwear consumer. In 2018, the site received an investment round of $15 million, led by Index Ventures.
In 2019, the company received an additional round of $60 million in funding round led by sneaker resell platform Goat Group, along with an investment from Groupe Artémis, a investment company started by Kering owner François Pinault in 1992 as a family investment vehicle.
