Material Exchange raises €25 million in series A funding

Stockholm-based start-up, Material Exchange, has raised EUR25 million (US$27.08 million) in Series A funding to support its mission of promoting sustainable business practices in the fashion industry.

Material Exchange is digitizing the garment and footwear industry’s material procurement process, replacing the industry’s complicated, fragmented interactions between brands and suppliers. The $2 trillion fashion supply chain’s goal is to drive sustainability and efficiency through a B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-enabled marketplace.

Material Exchange’s product suite, which includes a marketplace for connecting brands with a curated network of suppliers, a Brand Material Management System for organizing materials and collaborating with stakeholders, and 3D scanning for creating accurate visuals, will benefit from the new investment. In order to achieve its goal of advancing sustainable business practices for the fashion sector by bringing transparency and digital transformation to the market, the company plans to increase recruitment.

Darren Glenister, Material Exchange’s CEO, and founder, said that by combining fragmented data into one digital solution, they’re able to expedite their aim of driving the worldwide transition to sustainable, transparent apparel and footwear material sourcing. They believe the move will have the greatest impact on brands in the long run.

Material Exchange claims to offer an alternative to an industry known for complex and inefficient procedures, as well as high levels of waste and pollution. It claims to minimize waste, improve efficiency, and provide transparency in purchasing decisions. According to the company, the network already connects thousands of the world’s largest companies with material suppliers all around the world.

The latest round of funding, led by Molten Ventures and supported by earlier seed investors Partech, Inventure, Norrsken, Lyra, and Day One Capital, comes after a time of rapid expansion for the company.

Nicola McClafferty, partner at Molten Ventures, said that they see a big and largely unexplored opportunity in digitizing the highly complicated and offline fashion supply chain with Material Exchange. In the apparel sector, the demand for transparency and sustainability, as well as recurring supply chain disruptions, are proving to be major pressures for speeding up the structural trend of digitization of sourcing workflows for both brands and suppliers.