The crowd-sourced campaign on the Seedrs platform closed at €408,841, overfunded by 24%. Within 48 hours of opening its campaign privately to current investors, the Danish-based startup had reached its goal by raising €329,000.

More than 25% of the 652 investors in the current round were returning beneficial owners from LuggageHero’s first Seedrs campaign, in 2019. Also participating again in this campaign is the venture capital investor Nordic Eye. LuggageHero remained one of the most popular available investments on Seedrs during its campaign and debuted as the week’s biggest mover by percentage raised and number of new investors.

“Not only will this investment allow us to continue to grow, we think it speaks volumes in terms of optimism,” said Jannik Lawaetz, CEO and Co-founder of the hourly on-demand luggage storage platform, operating in 40 major cities in North America and Europe.

“I’ll be the first to admit that initially I wasn’t sure how it would go,” Lawaetz said. “Like most travel-related companies, our business is at a near standstill. But as soon as I started putting out feelers, people reacted very positively.”

Lawaetz sees several reasons for the enthusiastic responses, reactions he believes will show up in other sectors of the travel industry later this year.

“First, people want to feel they can believe in something, invest in something during these trying times, especially something hopeful, like travel,” he said. “We firmly believe that travel will be back, and clearly so do our shareholders.”

During this slow period, LuggageHero has been able to keep its momentum going by focusing on the future. (It also is grateful to be based in Denmark, a country that quickly subsidised small business owners.)

“While we take the current health and economic situation extremely seriously, we also are optimistic that not only will travel return, there will be a pent-up demand for it,” Lawaetz said. “We are poised to capture that, even more so now with this new funding round.”

Last year, LuggageHero raised €1,547,524 from its first Seedrs campaign. It used that funding to expand into 36 more cities in North America and Europe. It also acquired American competitor Knock City last year, extended its reach there. The purpose of this new funding round is to continue its geographic expansion and develop related new services.

The on-demand storage service has more than 1,000 storage locations in existing businesses, including shops, cafes and hotels. Since it started in 2016, it has stored luggage for more than 2.2 million hours.

Image credit: LuggageHero