SmartyPants Raises $2.6M with Crowd-Sourced Investments

VENICE, Calif.SmartyPants Vitamins announced it raised $2.59 million from both current and new investors after partnering with investment group Circle Up.

SmartyPants, a supplier of nutrient-dense gummy supplements, experienced a growth of 1,000 percent since its launch in the fall of 2010. SmartyPants will utilize the new funding to increase its marketplace growth strategy, expand its trade marketing support and hire key executives.

Circle Up is a crowd-funding investment platform that helps small consumers and retail companies raise money directly from a community of accredited investors. The crowd-funding startup emphasizes high-growth consumer products and retail private companies.

Partnering with Circle Up gave us access to an incredible community of value-added investors who will help us position to capture greater market share," said Courtney Nichols Gould, co-CEO and co-founder of SmartyPants. They saved us valuable time by managing the process for us and gave us access to investors who might not have crossed our paths but have strategic importance to us."

Vitamins are not effective if they are not taken consistently, in the right forms, and at the right times. SmartyPants' goal is to eliminate those variables by making their products highly nutrient-dense in one serving. SmartyPants is free of artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, gluten and casein, and uses organic and natural sweetenersno high fructose corn syrup.

SmartyPants was founded by a troupe of parents, entrepreneurs and leading health care practitioners and was the first to combine full multivitamin, omega 3 docosahexaenoic acid(DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and more than 100 percent RDI of vitamin D in gummy form.

I see tremendous potential in supporting a company like SmartyPants that delivers a high quality, healthy product to customers and has a compelling combination of large market opportunity, a unique formula within the supplement industry and healthy financial performance," said Lei Dei, SmartyPants investor.