Cala raises $3 mn to power next generation of commerce

“For years, the fashion industry has been fumbling to figure out how to become fully digital, focusing largely on consumer facing technologies and ignoring the back-end business-to-business side of the equation. Meanwhile, the next generation of tastemakers have been busy growing multi-million person audiences on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok,” said Andrew Wyatt, CEO of Cala. “We’re in the midst of an evolution in commerce that is centred around these niche digital audiences and Cala provides the easiest, most efficient way to conceptualise, launch and scale a digital-first brand.”

The New York City-headquartered Cala’s platform is used by direct-to-consumer brands, influencers, and retailers to seamlessly design and produce apparel in a completely digital-first way. Cala bids out each project to the best fit partner in their network of global manufacturing partners, providing speed and flexibility to the brands that it works with. For example, in January or February, a project might be bid out to a factory in another region versus China to avoid any production delays associated with Chinese New Year or a brand doing a small minimum order quantity would be bid out to a partner that specialises in small batch production.

“We are very excited to be a part of Cala and a technology that is empowering the next generation of cultural influencers to launch their own fashion brands,” said Sune Stilling, head of Growth at Maersk. “Fashion is an important industry for Maersk and Cala’s solution helps create market access for a new breed of fashion brands by offering an entire fashion lifecycle from initial ideation to production and fulfillment that can be set up and scaled in just a few months. We look forward to partnering with the Cala team on this journey.

With a clientele that sells almost exclusively direct-to-consumer, Cala’s one-stop platform for the design, creation, and production of clothing and accessories has seen continued growth and momentum, even in the midst of economic volatility. Cala has signed over 20 new partnerships in the past three months and produced over 75,000 garments across 500 unique apparel styles since January 2019. Some of Cala’s latest and most notable partnerships include NFL player Travis Kelce, hip hop artist KSI, Deena Nicole Cortese from The Jersey Shore, Tabria Majors and Colton Underwood.

"In the same way that the internet democratised access to building an audience, Cala affords the opportunity for anyone—regardless of their race, gender, sexual preference or socio-economic background—to create and amplify their voice through fashion,” said Janet Bannister, managing partner at Real Ventures. “Cala’s technology is the first to deliver simple, agile and streamlined access to the infrastructure that was historically only accessible to well-connected, well-financed individuals or brands. I’m passionate about companies and technology that will help usher in the next wave of generational change and couldn’t be more excited to be working with Cala.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)