Zafu, the rise of woman-focused sites & Glam

Zafu, a website is designed to help women find jeans or bras that fit their specific body type — to excruciating detail, as we’ve reported — has raised $4.1 million in a second round of funding.

What’s striking is that this is considered worthy of investment by venture capitalists. Numerous large fashion and retail companies could easily recreate this sort of site with minimal investment. Can Zafu really become a large company of the type that VCs like to bet on? Apparently Carlyle Venture Partners and Wasserstein SBIC Ventures, the investors, think so. Women are still coming online in great numbers, although its possible that trend of gender catch-up may end soon.

The site is also notable for being covered with ads delivered from Glam, another fast-growing woman’s oriented network focused on serving such advertisements. Glam itself is being fueled with millions of dollars in backing, creating quite an ecosystem of sites around it. Are these sites propping themselves up with cross partnerships? A house of cards, or long term sustainable model? We’ll be writing more about Glam Monday. Its July Comscore numbers continue to show growth, but there’s a complex story behind Glam…stay tuned.

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Tags: deal