Bourbon And Boots Gets $270,000 Venture Capital Boost

BourbonandBoots.com – the Little Rock-based Southern culture e-commerce website that has seen its profile and revenues rise quickly – has landed venture capital funding that co-founder Matt Price says will be used to improve the site for the long haul.

Kima Ventures, Will Bunker formerly of Match.com, and Pascal Levy-Garboa formerly of eBay have helped BourbonandBoots.com secure $270,000 in new investment capital. The money was raised in-state, across the U.S. and even internationally.

“Basically what we’re using the funding for is to focus on our infrastructure,” Price said on this week’s episode of Talk Business. “We built the product in a very quick way, so we could get a product out the door and we’ve grown so quickly that we have to go back and focus on our infrastructure so we can scale even bigger.”

Some of the money will also be utilized for “user acquisition,” or marketing efforts to recruit more customers to the site.

While the company’s new round of investment is a milestone, the e-commerce crew also cleared another major tipping point. In the last year, Bourbon and Boots eclipsed $1 million in sales.

If you haven’t heard of the web site yet, BourbonandBoots.com features artisan crafts from across the South. The high-end products ranging from jewelry to food to clothing are high quality and carefully selected for consideration on the site. Price and his partners get a percentage of every sale made through the site.

Peppered within the product placement are blog posts and stories about the Southern lifestyle.

Price says he and his business partner, Mike Mueller, have learned a lot in the last year. The two web site and SEO (search engine optimization) gurus had a game plan for their e-commerce web site, but Price said the statistics bore out an interesting trend.

“The biggest takeaway has been who we thought our audience would be. We had an idea that we might get a bit of a out of the southeast audience. We didn’t realize we’d get such a huge audience outside of the southeast,” he said.

Price noted that the audience is somewhat of an expatriate Southerner as well as those simply interested in the South, which is experiencing a mainstream moment in American pop culture. He said they receive comments from those who grew up in a Southern state to lifelong citizens of San Francisco, New York or even Canada.

“This lifestyle is very attractive to everyone,” Price said.

You can watch Price’s full interview in the video below.