North America’s First Simultaneous Cross Border Equity Crowdfunding Raise: Wafu

This is not the first international cross border equity crowdfunding offer, a title claimed by UK based Airline Odyssey, but this is a first for North America as consumer goods company WAFU has launched a duel listing in both Canada and the United States simultaneously.  Each day around the globe equity crowdfunding is climbing to the next level to demonstrate the power of this new form of finance and to pave the path for others to follow.

WAFU based in Montreal, Canada is pushing the envelope today by equity crowdfunding their company in Canada via Optimize Capital Markets and the USA via CircleUp, thus doing the first ever North American cross border equity crowdfunding raise.  This is game changing!

WAFU Inc. is looking to place $1,000,000 Series A-3 Preferred Shares with “accredited investors” as defined under applicable securities laws in the US and Canada.

“We have launched this groundbreaking cross-border equity crowdfunding offering in order to allow our loyal consumers in the United States and Canada to be able to participate economically in the continued success of the WAFU products that they love,” said WAFU CEO Gil Michel-Garcia.

Given the ongoing success of our WAFU products and the recent listings of our products at Walmart Canada, Sobeys Ontario, Loblaw’s Ontario and Western Canada and Federated Co-Op in Western Canada, we thought that the time was right to raise additional capital in order to fully take advantage of these growth opportunities. Assuming that we raise the capital that we need, we expect that these new listings will allow us to deliver top line growth of more than 50% next fiscal year”.

Optimize Capital Markets is a Canadian equity crowdfunding portal for accredited and institutional investors, it claims to be Canada’s most successful equity crowdfunding portal.  CircleUp is the premier equity crowdfunding portal for consumer goods in the United States. Ryan Caldbeck CEO of CircleUp, and co-founder Rory Eakin, truly changed the equity crowdfunding model when they launched CircleUp by recognizing the importance of partnering with firms that would co-invest in offerings with the crowd.  CircleUp has strategic agreements with a growing list of big name companies including Virgin America, Johnson & Johnson and Proctor Gamble.  CircleUp has helped companies raise over $40,000,000.00 by matching them with value added investor.

WAFU is no stranger to equity crowdfunding, in fact WAFU was the first Canadian company to successfully complete an equity crowdfunding seed round at CircleUp in August 2013.  This will be their second round of funding coming back to equity crowdfunding as a means to finding growth capital for their business.

“Equity Crowdfunding is an excellent way for us to not only raise the capital that we need to grow our company, but also allows us to increase our exposure with current and potential consumers of our products”, said CEO Gil Michel-Garcia

WAFU is Japanese inspired dressings and mayos have experienced increasing demand in Canada and USA.  This round of financing will allow them to further penetrate the USA market with their products.

WAFU’s, CEO is a great believer of equity crowdfunding and supports the eco-system to make sure that transparency, accountability and good governance are applied by all companies regardless of their size.   The company is a typical small, fast-growing, entity that is resourceful and understands that you need to be diligent about the way you operate your company and how you manage your stakeholders.

WAFU has been successful at raising capital from the crowd in the past and now they are taking it to the next level.

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Oscar Jofre is President/CEO KoreConX, The all in one solution for companies to manage their daily corporate activities. He is also a member of the Crowdfunding Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) in the USA  and Founder of the Equity Crowdfunding Alliance of Canada (ECFA Canada). He also sits on the Executive Council of the Midmarket Alliance in the United States.

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