manufacturing -

Smartex sews up $24.7M to put smarter eyes on textile manufacturing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Climate, Hardware, lightspeed venture partners, manufacturing, Smartex, textile manufacturingNo Comments

A lot of things might spring to mind when you hear “fashion,” but taking care of the planet generally isn’t on that list. Smartex just raised a couple of bolts’ worth of cash, sowing up a round of funding to bring smart tech to fabric manufacturing. The hope is to be able to detect textile defects in real time. The company is pushing hard on the green angle for its products. Smartex has developed machine-vision-driven software that makes fabric production more efficient by identifying defects, which primarily can be used to stop manufacturing if something is going wrong, preventing waste. In particular, the company argues that imperfect fabric can travel down the supply chain, with product issues only getting discovered much later in the manufacturing process. “I was born and raised by textile factory workers, I worked in factories when I was a teenager, I have a master’s in physics and the textile industry has been chasing me since ever,” said Gilberto Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Smartex, in an interview with ZebethMedia. “We co-founded Smartex because we’re obsessed with solving problems — and the textile industry has big ones. It’s probably the industry with the worst ratio size / automation. Textile factories don’t have the tools to produce in a clean, transparent, efficient way… generating massive amounts of waste and other problems.” The company declined to share the valuation of its $24.7 million round, but told ZebethMedia it was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tony Fadell’s Build Collective. Additional funds were raised from clothing giant H&M Group, DCVC, SOSV’s HAX, Spider Capital, Momenta Ventures, Bombyx Capital Partners and Fashion for Good. The company previously raised a $2.9 million seed round in 2019 co-led by DCVC and Spider Capital. Smartex’ founders, Antonio Rocha, CTO & Co-Founder, Gilberto Loureiro, CEO & Co-Founder, and Paulo Ribeiro, VP of Engineering & Co-Founder. Image Credits: Smartex. “It’s fantastic to work with such mentors that have invaluable experience. Lightspeed Ventures is a truly global firm and supports us in many geographies we operate, Paul [Murphy from Lightspeed VP] is also an operator with tremendous insights in scaling businesses,” said Loureiro, “Tony Fadell and his team are world-class mentors and operators with a unique product and marketing approach. Tony’s recent book “BUILD” is one of our bibles.” These Series A funds will enable Smartex to expand the business to new geographies and to continue to grow the team. “I’m so excited about textile production in Asia and all the mega-factories in Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, etc. No one will ever solve textile problems without having a deep understanding and presence in these markets. So, going into all the cultural aspects and making businesses here is really awesome,” said Loureiro. “Our ultimate vision and long-term goal is to expand into other industries to enable factories around the world to produce with significantly less waste. We won’t stop until we have made a massive difference.” It takes a rather sturdy stomach to take on an entrenched industry where a lot of the manufacturing facilities don’t have the necessary infrastructure to run AI-powered QA, but it’s a changing industry. “This industry is very challenging! That’s one of the reasons why few tech companies operate in here. We feel blessed to be already creating a massive impact — but when compared with the overall size of the industry, it feels like nothing,” Loureiro explains. “If there was ever a time to solve massive problems — it’s now!”

Katana, an ERP for SMB manufacturers, raises $34M • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Commerce, Enterprise, ERP, Katana, manufacturing, StartupsNo Comments

Katana, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for small- and medium-sized manufacturers, has raised €35 million ($34 million) in a Series B round of funding. ERP is a form of business management software that can serve any number of functions inside a company, from marketing and risk management, to supply chain management and beyond. Integrations are pivotal to any ERP software, as it typically involves taking data from different systems such as HR, CRM, accounting, and order management to generate insights and analysis — at its core, ERP is all about identifying potential problems and improving efficiency. Founded out of Tallinn, Estonia, in 2017, Katana is an ERP for the manufacturing sector, with prebuilt integrations for many of the most common tools that a manufacturer might use, including e-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify and WooCommerce), accounting (e.g., QuickBooks and Xero), shipping, forecasting, CRM, and more. Collectively, these various integrations can help a manufacturer predict what their future inventory needs will be based on historical or real-time sales data, for example, to ensure that they don’t run out of stock or parts. Katana: Inventory overview Image Credits: Katana End of ‘made in China’ era A big driving force behind demand for such software is direct-to-consumer (D2C) manufacturing, which has seen smaller, local manufacturers — or “micro-manufacturers” — remove many of the intermediaries that were traditionally necessary to get their products made. “The rise in D2C manufacturing has driven a small manufacturing renaissance, giving consumers a wealth of options that reduce the hold of brands relying on mass production,” Katana co-founder and CEO Kristjan Vilosius explained o ZebethMedia. “As manufacturing moves closer to the ever-increasingly conscious consumer, brands that rely on local production and inventory are gaining market share. In short, the ‘made in China’ era is ending.” This has been aided by modern technologies such as 3D printing and computer-aided laser cutters, allowing companies to produce goods on a smaller scale away from centralized, mass-production factories. In tandem, the emergence of online marketplaces, e-commerce software, and the broader cloud computing movement has made it easier to assume greater control of the entire business process, from manufacturing through to sales. “Manufacturers already have a tech stack of tools like e-commerce platforms, shipping tools, and accounting software,” Vilosius continued. “What’s missing is a central source-of-truth that streamlines the flow of information and minimizes manual data entry and, as a result, human error.” Legacy ERP software from the likes of Netsuite and SAP are typically geared toward larger businesses, which is why we’ve seen a slew of younger upstarts enter the fray to much VC fanfare in recent years, with Katana and its ilk trying to usher in a more modern toolset purpose-built for SMBs — and in Katana’s case specifically, SMB manufacturers. “Supporting this new wave of manufacturers is critical — enterprise business suites like NetSuite and SAP come with hefty costs and a plethora of features and functionalities that exceed the needs of small- to medium-sized businesses,” Vilosius said. “The ERP space is also known for poor user experience and user interface, and low customer satisfaction. Many small businesses opt for spreadsheets despite being error-prone and difficult to scale as their businesses grow.” Katana had previously raised around $16 million, the bulk of which arrived via its Series A round last year, and in the intervening months the company claims to have quadrupled its annual recurring revenue (ARR), grown its headcount from 30 to 140, and scaled its customer base from “hundreds of micro-businesses to thousands of customers in the SMB segment,” according to Vilosius. On top of that, the company launched an open API for customers to build their own integrations. With another $34 million in the bank, the company said that it’s well-financed to “bring manufacturing software into the digital era,” which will include rolling out “more advanced accounting integrations.”