Backbone Closes $18M Series A Funding

Backbone, the leading cloud-based, next-generation workflow suite for consumer goods companies, announced today that it secured an additional $10 million in investment as part of Series A2 financing led by Foundry Group. This funding, combined with the $8 million Backbone raised in August 2018, has Backbone closing their Series A round with an impressive $18 million in funding over 12 months. They have raised a total of $23 million in funding to date.

During the last quarter of 2018 and first half of 2019, Backbone used a portion of the investment to advance their platform and expand growth into consumer goods industries like fashion, furniture, home and hard goods, textiles, and more. The Boulder-based company now works with more than 150 companies, including world-leading, digitally-native brands like Allbirds, Warby Parker, Outdoor Voices, Uppababy, Serena & Lily, Betabrand and Parachute Home.

Launched in July 2019, Backbone's new cloud-based platform has proven to be an energizing innovation for industries like fashion and retail, which have been slow to embrace the digital age. Investors and venture capitalists continue to support Backbone because of its unique technology and cloud native platform that:

Is a modern SaaS offering that eliminates top pain points during the product development process, most of which are due to inadequate or outdated infrastructure
Affords users with unprecedented opportunities for improved efficiency and growth that other PLM software and outdated tools of the past could not
Improves cross-functional visibility and increases speed to market while decreasing revision cycles and waste while seamlessly connecting all workflows and will integrate with popular work-related apps like Shopify, Netsuite, and Slack
Is the only product of its kind, empowering brands to make smarter, data-backed decisions through an easy to learn, continuously evolving cloud-based interface that mirrors and responds to the fast-paced direct-to-consumer market
"This is an incredible investment. It will continue to accelerate the growth of the Backbone team and our core product. It will also aid us as we advance in the middle market while garnering more business in the enterprise market," said Matthew Klein, CEO of Backbone. "It allows us to further enable today's leading disruptive brands to make products better, faster, and more efficiently. Since the beginning, we've never thought of ourselves as being up against our legacy incumbents. Instead, we are competing against a fast-growing direct to consumer economy with a customer demand that is greater than ever."

Backbone plans to address three key growth initiatives with the additional $10 million in funding received: increasing staffing, providing updated features and functionality to the Backbone platform, and solidifying their market presence. By the end of 2019, the company plans to bring on a Chief Operating Officer and seeks to double their employee count, going from 50 employees to over 100 by Q2 of 2020.

"We've seen firsthand the inefficiencies and difficulties direct-to-consumer brands face in getting great products to market," said Jason Mendelson, founding partner of Foundry Group. "We believe that Backbone, with its modern and seamless platform experience, is the only real solution for brands to work in a fully digital space. We are incredibly excited to partner with them."

About Backbone
Backbone PLM is a cloud-based, next-generation workflow solution that streamlines the complex manufacturing process for consumer goods companies of all sizes. The all-in-one platform boosts productivity, reduces errors, improves visibility, and helps companies get their products to market faster. Backbone centralizes all design, development, and production information, making it accessible to every member of a team. It offers automated data importing from clients' own systems and data management through an intuitive and easy to use interface. Backbone is ready for your next innovation. To learn more about how Backbone can help, visit backboneplm.com.