Crave Raises $1.3 Million in Venture Capital

SAN FRANCISCO — Luxury sex toy startup Crave reports that it has raised $1.3 million in its latest funding round.

According to CrowdfundInsider.com, the funding came from various angel investors and investment platforms CircleUp and AngelList.

In 2013, the company raised $2.4 million from more than 60 angel investors. The company also secured more than $275,000 through its crowdfunding campaign on Tilt for the Vesper vibrator, and surpassed $50,000 in crowdfunding for the Flex Programmable series and the Flex Greatest Hits series.

Michael Topolovac, co-founder and CEO of Crave, said, “It’s been exciting to watch the sex toy market move more mainstream in the last few years. This larger market trend, combined with customer excitement around our products, has helped us sustain 50 percent YOY growth while becoming a highly profitable hardware company While we are funding operations out of cash flows, the new investment will allow us to invest in inventory to support our increasing growth as well as make strategic long term investments to expand our product offerings.”

Crave co-founder and vice president of design Ti Chang said, “We’ve been extremely fortunate over the past few years to have our products embraced not only by consumers, but by the global design community at large. With that increased visibility comes the challenge of protecting our designs, as well as continuing to make more and better products. This new investment will be highly valuable on both fronts.”

Pat Robinson, business development manager at CircleUp, said, “At CircleUp, we help entrepreneurs with emerging businesses that are growing quickly, already seeing great velocity of sales, filling an important market demand and delighting users authentic brands and products. When our platform performed a data-driven analysis of Crave’s business across a wide range of variables, Crave surfaced as a great opportunity for our network of investors.”