Press release – Brightpearl, the leading multichannel retail management platform, today announced it has raised $11 million in its latest round of financing, with funding from venture investors including Eden Ventures, MMC Ventures, and Notion Capital, supplemented by a loan from Silicon Valley Bank and Columbia Lake Partners. This brings the total funding raised to $30.5 million.
Brightpearl is using the funding to accelerate the growth of its sales and marketing organisation in San Francisco, and to continue to scale its engineering, service and support teams to drive innovation and growth, and to persistently deliver value to its more than 1,400 customers in 30 countries.
Brightpearl supplies a cloud-based inventory management and retail business platform to small to medium independent retail and wholesale customers. The software is uniquely positioned in the market as the only fully integrated solution that combines accounting, inventory, purchasing, customer relationship management (CRM), shipping / fulfilment, point of sale (POS) and other modules to help manage every aspect of a growing retail business.
“Our customers continuously outperform the market and compete on par with large retailers, and we believe this is testament to the operational efficiencies that Brightpearl helps them deliver,” said Charles Grimsdale, executive chairman, Brightpearl. “Our customers sell globally on multiple channels both online and offline. They are highly innovative, and we are delighted that Brightpearl helps them to grow faster and achieve greater operational efficiencies.”
According to Craig Netterfield, managing partner at Columbia Lake Partners, “Brightpearl addresses a significant unmet need in a fast growing market. The team has developed a mission-critical platform that enables thousands of retail businesses to compete successfully. We founded Columbia Lake Partners to provide growth loans to leading European companies like Brightpearl. We’re very much looking forward to working with the team to continue building a phenomenal product and company.”
The accelerated growth and profits realised by streamlining operations, helps Brightpearl customers establish themselves as leading brands in the market. Brightpearl customers have continuously outgrown the market – last year their online turnover grew an unprecedented 35%, nearly three times higher than the growth rate of the UK’s entire e-commerce sector.
Andrew Hunter, director at Silicon Valley Bank added, “This is an exciting time for Brightpearl. We’re delighted to provide debt funding at this milestone – enabling the team to accelerate growth in 2016 and beyond. The software Brightpearl provides its clients makes a big difference to their businesses, enhancing their ability to scale rapidly and stay efficient. Silicon Valley Bank is committed to the thriving SaaS market and we look forward to building a longstanding relationship with Brightpearl as it goes from strength to strength.”