Why We Invested in MakerSights
Traditional retail is an environmental disaster. 21 billion pounds of unwanted retail products end up in landfill every year. A third of all apparel products are never sold. Brands, lacking the ability to accurately forecast demand, overproduce products and often incinerate (yes, burn!) the excess inventory and move on to the next season. This outcome doesn’t benefit anyone, and brands and retailers lose money on those unsold products ($472 billion in 2019 alone). This is the inevitable result of the status quo process for producing apparel and consumer goods, which involves long lead times, limited data and real-time feedback, and difficult coordination across global teams.
This is where MakerSights comes in, helping brands create more products that sell and fewer that don’t, and giving teams at those brands workflow tools to make their jobs easier and more collaborative.
Cofounders Dan Leahy and Matt Field are leading the charge at MakerSights to digitize the merchandising process. Dan previously founded a company focused on yield management for restaurants, and is clearly talented at creating and selling software that makes legacy systems more efficient. Matt was a founding team member at Birchbox, and has a keen sense for the retail world, both the needs of consumers and the pain points of brands and retailers.
MakerSights is building collaboration and customer insight tools across each stage of the product to market process. From the initial product design to the last stage of the sale, they’re giving historically siloed teams a way to communicate with each other, and importantly, with the consumer. This allows merchants to spend less time in meetings, and make more informed decisions.
The challenges facing the market were obvious, the team and product at MakerSights were compelling, and the final leg supporting our enthusiasm for this investment was what we heard from customers, who gave rave reviews. Customers like HOKA ONE ONE and New Balance credited MakerSights with shortening their development cycles, increasing sales from fewer SKUs, reducing wasted inventory investment, and fostering cross-functional collaboration in their organizations.
Our goal at G2 is to invest in exceptional teams leading companies that are digitizing traditional industries to make them more sustainable. MakerSights is doing just that in a large and important part of the global economy, and we are thrilled to partner with Dan, Matt, and the team on this journey. And, of course, MakerSights is hiring! See here for opportunities to join.
Press Release here: https://www.privateequitywire.co.uk/2021/08/04/304529/makersights-raises-usd25m-series-b-funding-round