Modeling marketplace in China snaps up $8 million funding

Moko, a Chinese online marketplace for models that’s combined with a fashion community, has picked up RMB 50 million (US$8.1 million) in funding. The investment comes from Beijing’s Holch Capital, reports local tech blog 36Kr.

The site allows established and budding models to connect with agencies, and it has led some to high profile work in marketing material for brands such as Aston Martin, Asus, and Tencent Games.

Moko’s social element resembles Sina Weibo or Twitter, wherein models – female or male – or anyone in the fashion industry can post stuff and retweet others. The startup claims to have 2.5 million registered users who upload about 6,000 photos per day, but it’s not clear how many of those are the beautiful people. More recently it has been building up a lot more online content to become more accessible to normal users (us non-beautiful people), covering topics like make-up, visual arts, and cosplay.

As part of that strategy, Moko recently came out with a MokoBook mobile app (pictured above) that, like the “lookbook” feature on many other sites, is designed to provide fashion inspiration and guidance to female readers.

The business was founded in 2007 and soon attracted seed funding, but then it spent a few lost years restructuring after mismanagement by some of the founding team. Now under a new CEO, it seems to be growing again. The next step is to expand the marketplace to all kinds of fashion industry talent, such as photographers and make-up artists.

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(Source: 36Kr)