NORTH BERGEN, NJ—April 25, 2019—Suuchi Inc., the next-generation supply chain platform provider for fashion brands and retailers, announced that they raised an $8 million investment in Series A funding from Edison Partners. The investment will enable the company to accelerate sales growth, further scale operations and its network, and ensure enterprise-readiness for its cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) application, the Suuchi GRID.
Since its founding three years ago, Suuchi has enjoyed rapid growth by delivering a winning combination of domestic production enabled by modern technology. The Suuchi supply chain platform layers the Suuchi GRID application onto its network of carefully curated network of freelancers, mills, and factories. Utilizing the platform, brands and retailers design and produce millions of units and, on average, have doubled sales, improved margins by 25 percent in their first year, and delivered up to 20 times faster service to their customers.
Founder and CEO Suuchi Ramesh, a software engineer with an MBA, previously spent 10-plus years in predictive analytics and software sales at venture-backed companies that scaled to unicorn status. She started the company based on the premise that there is a major disconnect between how consumers purchase and how static apparel supply chains service demand. Manufacturers and brands in this multitrillion-dollar industry lack complete, real-time tracking and visibility across the supply chain. Ramesh set out to develop a platform that not only automates product development workflow, but also connects an ever-growing network of domestic factories, enabling the collection of micro data points across the supply chain with every piece of clothing that is made. The result is both speed of production and digital transparency — at scale. Today, Suuchi’s platform is delivering on this value proposition with more than 100 domestic factories on its platform and a capacity of 8 million units.
“This investment gives us the fuel to accelerate our mission to leverage powerful network effects to drive greater and faster sales for brands, create jobs for U.S.-based factories, and better the lives of our communities,” according to Suuchi Ramesh. “We are making these goals real by creating a platform that works for people who work and de-materializes the supply chain into a digital, local, on-demand world.”
The investment from Edison Partners will be used to accelerate sales momentum and Suuchi GRID enhancements for enterprise brands, and to expand the community of factories in the United States. “The combination of Suuchi’s passionate vision, her team’s decades of deep apparel manufacturing expertise, and the speed to market realized from the platform is resonating in the market, as evidenced by notable emerging and enterprise brands adopting the Suuchi GRID and moving and consolidating their offshore production to Suuchi’s domestic network,” said Kelly Ford, Partner, Edison Partners, who led the investment and joins the company’s board of directors. “We are proud to partner with the Suuchi team to continue to disrupt this $2 trillion industry and scale growth as a new standard for modern, consumer-driven fashion brands.”
More than 200 brands and retailers from forward-thinking startups to large enterprises trust Suuchi to innovate their supply chain and produce high-quality garments here in the USA.
“Our laser focus on sustaining premium-level production in the United States led us to Suuchi,” said Trish Moreno, CEO of Little Giraffe, a premium online baby boutique. “This relationship has helped us digitize our supply chain while also providing much-needed transparency to the production process. We are also thrilled to be in a strategic partnership with another woman-run company that shares our unwavering commitment to enduring brand quality.”
Not only has the company opened up the fashion industry to brands of every size with its platform, but it is also training local New Jersey and New York area residents to develop advanced manufacturing skills. With its strategic office location just minutes from the Garment District, those trained are able to work within factories on the Suuchi network, or apply new skills to seek employment elsewhere in multiple industries. Through this work, Suuchi received a $38 million tax credit from the state of New Jersey to grow the business in the state and to add 410 more employees over the next three years. The company currently employs 120 people at their New Jersey headquarters and is actively recruiting for positions in sales, marketing, software engineering, human resources and finance.
About Suuchi
Suuchi Inc. is a next-generation supply chain platform for fashion brands and retailers. Using its product lifecycle management (PLM) software, Suuchi GRID, and its network of carefully curated freelancers, factories and mills, Suuchi designs and produces millions of units at speedy turnarounds. Suuchi is transforming retail, enabled by mega trends of just-in-time production, shop-floor integration, and supply chains created for consumer demand. For more information, visit https://www.suuchi.com/
About Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams grow and scale successful companies. The firm’s investment team brings extensive investing and operating experience to each investment. Through a unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating centers of excellence, the Edison Director Network, and executive education programs, Edison employs a truly integrated approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. A team of experts in financial technology, healthcare IT and enterprise solution sectors, Edison targets high-growth companies with $5 to $25 million in revenue; investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Edison Partners is based in Princeton, NJ and manages more than $1.4 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.
