Flagship, a revolutionary retail inventory planning platform, announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding led by global software investor Insight Partners. Dream Ventures, Essential Capital, Klemhurst, Future Archives, AUFI Ventures, and the Kleiner Perkins Scout Fund participated in the round along with several strategic angel investors. This investment underscores Flagship’s commitment to deliver pioneering, customer-focused, data-driven solutions to the retail sector. Flagship will use the funds to further accelerate their first product – an inventory cloud solution – and grow its customer base.
Utilizing advanced machine learning and AI models, Flagship provides predictive intelligence that retailers can use to optimize their inventory decisions. Flagship’s solution blends customer-level product feature-level data, allowing for more accurate demand prediction and smarter inventory management. Early customers include Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL), State & Liberty, Cariuma, Ministry of Supply, Public Rec, and more.
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Adam & Ryan Goldston, Co-Founders of APL, the second largest independently owned athletic footwear brand in the world, remarked: “What sets Flagship apart is its dynamic and adaptable nature. The platform is an entire ecosystem that sheds light on the predictive reasoning behind inventory decisions, and then it allows us to manipulate inputs to change outputs. It doesn’t just tell us what inventory to stock; it shows us where we should be placing our bets.”
Flagship’s unique platform solves one of the most pressing issues in the retail industry — poor and unsophisticated inventory planning that costs brands and retailers millions each year. The company’s AI and machine learning-based platform has already shown promise in backtesting, with findings suggesting that improved inventory decisions could save brands in their target market between $40,000 to $150,000 per item from premature sell-outs alone.
“Understanding customer needs to inform inventory decision making is a universal desire for all brands. AI can help achieve this by bringing forward remarkable insights that support inventory optimization,” said Jeff Horing, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Insight Partners. “With its innovative inventory product, Flagship is uniquely positioned to empower retail brands to harness these capabilities at an unprecedented scale. Insight is thrilled to support Justin and the Flagship team, and we look forward to future applications that support business-wide decision making.”
Justin Abrams, Co-Founder and CEO of Flagship, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Insight Partners as we transform Flagship’s vision from blueprint to breakthrough. This funding enables us to bring on board the brightest minds in data science and engineering, in order to deliver an exceptional product experience with outsized ROI for our customers.” Haftan Eckholdt, Flagship’s Chief Technology Officer added: “Having built data science capabilities at Amazon, AIG, and Albertson’s, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of AI and machine learning on a company’s top-line and bottom-line revenue. I am excited to be leading the technology team at Flagship, where data science isn’t a function, it’s the business model.”