Friday, September 23, 2011

Daily Grommet snaps up $310K in new funding

By Rodney Brown

Retail products spotlighting website company Daily Grommet Inc. has taken in $310,000 of a planned $750,000 in new funding, federal documents show.

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Lexington company, which runs the website dailygrommet.com, has nine investors in this latest round, made up of a combination debt and options or warrants for securities in the company. That combination is similar to Daily Grommet’s most recent financing, in March. At that time, the company had 11 unnamed backers putting $575,000 into a round also planned to top out at $750,000. The SEC filing says that this latest financing is a separate round from the March financing.

In January Daily Grommet closed on $475,000 of financing from 13 backers. That document filed with the SEC did not name the backers but did identify as involved as directors of the company Jill Preotle of Boston Golden Seeds and Israel Ganot, president and CEO of electronics recycling firm Gazelle. Preotle and Ganot are likewise named as related person in this new filing.

Founded in October of 2008 by CEO Jules Pieri, Daily Grommet is an e-commerce site that describes its offerings as “products of great utility, style or invention that haven’t hit the big-time yet.” Including a $3.4 million Series A funding round the company closed in April of 2010, Daily Grommet has now raised approximately $4.3 million in funding. Previous backers of the company have included Launch Capital and Gerry Laybourned, founder of Nickelodeon and Oxygen Media, as well as angel investors Jean Hammond, member of Hub Angels and Launchpad Venture Group; John Landry, of Lead Dog Ventures; and Nancy Peretsman.