Second Rotation, the Boston company that runs the electronics recycling site Gazelle.com, has been fairly quiet for the past year. No more.
The startup said today it has raised a $22 million Series D financing round led by Craton Equity Partners. Existing investors Physic Ventures, Venrock Associates, and RockPort Capital also participated in the round. The company most recently raised a $12 million C round in 2010 (announced exactly a year ago today). It has raised about $44 million to date.
Xconomy wrote about Second Rotation when it first came out with the Gazelle brand in 2008, and before that, back when my colleague Rebecca had an old Motorola phone on which she spoke with Gazelle co-founder Israel Ganot. (It turns out she still has that phone. OK, I shouldn’t throw phones, I mean stones—I only upgraded to a BlackBerry earlier this year. Did I mention I hate my data plan?)
Second Rotation was founded in 2006. The company says its revenues grew by 155 percent in 2010 compared with the previous year. Gazelle, which also says it has more than 175,000 customers who have traded in or recycled phones and other used electronics, plans to use the new financing to accelerate its marketing to mass media and make new investments in operational capital, inventory acquisition, and other areas of the business.
“Our goal is to completely transform the way consumers think about the consumer electronics they buy, sell and own,” said Ganot, who is now the CEO, in a statement today.
