# BeachMint **BeachMint** was a Santa Monica, Calif., online retailer founded in 2010 by [[Diego Berdakin]] and Myspace co-founder [[Josh Berman]]. It sold jewelry, clothing, shoes and beauty products designed with celebrities, through monthly subscription sites such as JewelMint, launched with actress Kate Bosworth, and StyleMint, ShoeMint and BeautyMint. It raised about $75 million from venture investors by 2012. In 2014 it took over [[Condé Nast]]'s *Lucky* magazine, which closed the following year. **Why it's on the map:** BeachMint is the company that made Berdakin and Berman partners, and it was the start of the Los Angeles business career that led Berdakin to co-found [[CloudKitchens]] with [[Sky Dayton]] and to become the first donor to [[David Sacks]]'s [[Purple Good Government PAC]]. Its takeover of *Lucky* is also an early case of a print magazine handed to a venture-backed startup that could not keep it alive. ## History - **Founding.** Berdakin and Berman ran Slingshot Labs, the internet incubator of [[News Corporation]], until April 2010. They launched BeachMint that June with $5 million in seed money and raised another $10 million in December. - **Growth.** The model was "social commerce": celebrity partners designed the goods and promoted them to their fans, and members got personalized picks each month. By early 2014 the company had about 150 employees. - **The Lucky Group.** On August 11, 2014, Condé Nast, which is owned by [[Advance Publications]], combined *Lucky* with BeachMint in a joint venture called The Lucky Group, with Berman as chief executive. In effect BeachMint took control of the magazine. *Lucky* went quarterly in May 2015 and stopped printing in June, when The Daily Front Row reported that investment the company had expected did not come through. The last of its editorial staff were let go in November 2015. ## Connections - [[Diego Berdakin]] · [[Josh Berman]] · [[CloudKitchens]] · [[Sky Dayton]] - [[Condé Nast]] · [[Advance Publications]] · [[News Corporation]] - [[David Sacks]] · [[Purple Good Government PAC]]