Spartoo hires Jefferies to help raise cash

PARIS/LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Spartoo, a French online shoe retailer, has hired investment bank Jefferies to help it raise 100 million euros from a new investor as it seeks to expand, sources familiar with the situation said.

Jefferies and Spartoo, which one of the sources said was worth between 200 million and 250 million euros, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The unlisted company, which calls itself Europe's No. 1 online shoe retailer, has said it is aiming to boost sales to 100 million euros this year from 60 million euros last year.

Founded in 2006 by Boris Saragaglia, in his late twenties, and two other recent graduates of French elite universities, Spartoo has sought to replicate the business model of Zappos, the U.S. online shoe retailer, which was eventually sold to Amazon.com for $1.1 billion.

The name of the Grenoble, France-based company is an unlikely combination of the words Sparta (as in Spartan sandle) and the double-o featuring in such famous Internet names as Google and Yahoo.

But the road to Internet riches may be tough for Spartoo, which faces competition from Zalando of Germany -- another "Zappos clone" -- as well as Amazon's Javari site, which sells shoes and handbags in France and Great Britain.

Existing investors in Spartoo include venture capital firms Highland Capital Partners, Endeavor Vision as well as CMC-CIC Capital Prive and Aplus Finance. (Reporting by Victoria Howley and Christian Plumb)