Crisp platform addresses supply chain challenges through unified API that enables data-sharing across retail-supplier silos
Crisp, the open-data programmatic commerce platform for the consumer goods industry, has raised $35M in Series B funding led by 3L with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital and Spring Capital. Crisp had raised a total of $61M since inception.
In addition, the Series B includes support from a hand-selected group of investors designed to bring unique business acumen and network connections to the table to support exponential growth. These include Steve Papa, Scott Beattie, Kim Perell, James Brennan, Dermot Halpin, Jonah Goodhart, Noah Goodhart, Bill Wise, Mark Newhall, 9Yards Capital, Gaingels, Carsten Thoma, Mike Barry, Tapas Capital, Ridgeback Capital, and Blue Cloud.
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Crisp is leading the consumer goods industry as it moves toward a programmatic model – creating end-to-end supply chain processes that are highly collaborative, agile and resilient, where supply meets demand and everything from replenishment to distribution to marketing operates at speed and scale. The company plans to use the funding to expand its offerings to deliver one application programming interface (API) through a unified collaboration platform that enables data-sharing across the entire supply chain. Over two hundred brands, ranging in revenue from $5M-$80B USD, already utilize Crisp. Crisp also partners with some of the world’s largest distributors and retailers with revenue in the tens of billions.
“We invest in passionate founders solving large, important problems. Crisp aims to reduce global food waste by targeting the root cause – a lack of visibility into supply and demand data,” said Dave Leyrer, co-founder and partner at 3L. “COVID-19 has highlighted shortcomings in the entire consumer goods supply chain, and by serving as a data repository and a single source of truth that market participants (producers, distributors, retailers) can rely upon, Crisp can reduce food waste and inequality and improve the profitability of all players in the ecosystem. Crisp has a talented team and new funding will empower them to grow their industry-leading platform across customer segments for a more connected ecosystem.”
Building a Supply Chain to Withstand Disruptions
As customer buying behaviors continue to rapidly evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for agile supply chains has never been greater. Crisp is working with consumer goods brands, brokers, distributors and retailers to optimize the value chain by providing an open flow of real-time data, enabling companies to flex with changes in demand across product SKUs, retail locations and buying channels.
“The pandemic exposed longstanding weaknesses in the complex system of the consumer goods industry and has impacted every aspect of the supply chain. Crisp connects hundreds of data sources and ingests complex business data, standardizes it and delivers critical insights in a way that is open, flexible and collaborative,” said Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Crisp. “We appreciate the significant support of 3L and FirstMark who believe that technology can drive innovation and help build a supply chain that can withstand disruptions. We are also grateful that so many leading investors recognize the critical value that Crisp offers and that they are willing to not only commit financial resources, but also their time, expertise and network.”
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Programmatic commerce combines open data access and AI with smart analytics, allowing brands to efficiently gather and integrate siloed data, analyze insights and provide real-time data-driven supply chain recommendations. As a result, brands gain visibility into upstream and downstream supply chain partner data, elevating important insights and enabling real-time supply chain decisions. This empowers brands to quickly adjust production volumes as well as transportation and logistics to reduce waste and meet true demand, when and where it is needed.
“Crisp is a big part of what I’m doing. I definitely need this tool because otherwise, I would be harvesting spreadsheets all day, which is not what our team wants me to do,” explains Charles Busch, St. National Accounts Manager, Route to Market at Illy’s. “They want me to be able to take a snapshot and take action.”
Current customers include over 200 emerging and enterprise brands such as Greenleaf, Nature’s Way and Ripple. Retail and distribution connectors cover 80% of the U.S. grocery retail market online and offline.