Liftopia raises $1.3 Million for Mountain Activity E-Commerce Platform

Liftopia, the San Francisco – based online retailer of lift tickets and mountain resort activities, has recently announced the end of a round of funding which has brought the company the amount of $1.3 million. This funding round has been led by First Round Capital, along with Dave Morin and Chris Sacca, which have added to the existing investors which include Erik Blachford and Sam Shank.

Evan Reece, the co-founder and CEO of the company, stated the following: “Nearly three in four Liftopia customers skied more last season because of the deals they found on our site. By working with resorts to manage their pricing dynamically, consumers are able to stretch their dollars to ski more. We’re excited to add First Round Capital, Chris Sacca and Dave Morin to our impressive roster of investors, all of whom are as passionate about helping the ski industry as we are and have deep experience identifying and running innovative businesses.”

The company has been founded in 2006 and functions as a complete sky and a resort activity marketplace which works directly with more than 150 mountain resorts across North America. Liftopia is a platform where clients can buy online lift tickets and some resort activities tickets which mountain resorts sell in advance at a rather incredible discount which goes up to 80% off. Of course, in order to secure this type of discounts, the tickets are generally date-specific, non-refundable and non-transferable.

With the money raised in this new round of funding, the company intends to expand its range of products and services such as to be able to also provide ski lessons, rentals, dining credits and VIP mountain experiences such as Fast Tracks, First Tracks and even private ski mountain rentals. Liftopia does not only provide direct sales to its customers, but it also has an e-commerce and technology platform which help resorts manage the inventory and the revenue by enabling variable pricing by the means of advanced sales and demand pattern analytics. The company also intends to use this money in order to expand its technology platform so as to be able to provide more tools and services to its partners.

Kent Goldman from First Round Capital, which will now be joining Liftopia’s board of directors, has stated the following: “Recreational skiing and snowboarding is a massive global business. Liftopia is modernizing ticket purchase behaviour by allowing lift ticket sales to happen online and in advance. The same shift that OpenTable enabled in the restaurant industry is being driven by Liftopia in the ski industry. The Liftopia founders and team have built an incredible platform. It’s helping resorts manage their business more profitably while giving skiers and riders mountain experiences at great prices.”

The company has been founded by Evan Reece and Ron Schneidermann, both of which previously worked at Hotwire.com, in 2006. In the last five years, the transaction volume of the company has expanded on a year-over-year basis, reaching the point where it has tripled. With this new amount of money, Liftopia has managed to raise, by now, nearly $3 million in venture capital and angel investments.