Indigo Fair, which has offices in Kitchener and San Francisco, has raised a $12 million USD Series A from co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Sequoia Capital also participated in the round. Indigo Fair’s platform allows independent retailers to find new products from niche creators. According to a blog post, the company connected over 500 makers — who must all apply to be on the platform — with almost 17,000 retailers.
Forerunner’s Kirsten Green will be joining the company’s board of directors.
“Our mission at Indigo Fair is to transform wholesale and accelerate the Shop Local movement.”
– Max Rhodes
“Local retailers today survive on their ability to find the best products for their stores and offer them at reasonable price points,” CEO Max Rhodes wrote in a blog post. “After all, that’s what keeps customers coming back. Too many local retailers just buy the same stuff over and over again. Those that do experiment often end up marking up their best-selling items well over their suggested retail price to cover the costs of bringing in products that don’t sell.”
The startup works to solve challenges facing independent retailers doing wholesale purchases; rather than making large upfront purchases that may not sell, the platform charges retailers only 60 days after they buy, when they can decide if they want to return unsold product. The platform also uses machine learning to analyze aesthetic and customer demographics from websites and social profiles to make product recommendations.
The company plans to integrate its solution into Square and Shopify, so that when retailers sync their POS, Indigo Fair can pool their sales data with data from hundreds of other stores to make recommendations.
“Our mission at Indigo Fair is to transform wholesale and accelerate the Shop Local movement,” Rhodes said. “We believe starting a business is a calling that can provide a path to autonomy and financial security that’s increasingly difficult to find in our economy.”