Backbone, a next-generation workflow platform for consumer goods companies, just hit $23 million in total funding. Securing an additional $10 million in Series A financing led by Foundry Group, Backbone has gathered an impressive $18 million in funding in a year. The company's first funding was a Seed round of $250k back in 2016.
From August of 2018 to August 2019, Backbone has mainly partitioned their proceeds to expand their niche within consumer-based industries such as textiles, furniture companies like MGK Asia, etc. The Boulder-based company now is in collaboration with several companies such as Warby Parker, Uppababy, Betabrand, Allbirds, and Outdoor Voices. Additionally, Backbone says that by the end of 2019 they'll be taking in a Chief Operating Officer and will be increasing their workforce 2x by the second quarter of the year 2020.
CEO and co-founder of Backbone Matthew Klein says the recent financing will aid Backbone in advancing to the middle market. "It allows us to enable today's leading disruptive brands further 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." said Matthew.
The Spine of Backbone PLM
Backbone is a cloud-based platform that provides PLM solutions for consumer goods companies. PLM stands for product lifecycle management, which provides an analytical and technical approach in managing the entire lifecycles of products and goods in the industry. Backbone eliminates extreme pain point during the development process of products.
Also, Backbone improves the total efficiency and overall growth of a company through cross-functional visibility. This increases revenue opportunities while decreasing the totality of revision cycles and waste. What's more, Backbone seamlessly connects workflows and can be integrated to top work-related applications such as Shopify, Slack, and NetSuite.
The Faces Behind Backbone
Backbone was founded and spearheaded by two prominent brothers, Matthew and Andrew Klein. With 30 years of experience in fashion and consumer goods behind them, they have developed Backbone to automate the design and production process, reduce lead times during the course of the supply chain and have products get to market faster.
The company says traditional and outdated Product Lifecycle Management infrastructures are slow and rigid. For this reason, the brothers developed Backbone to help minimize the work process of each product development. "The platform eliminates friction and complexities while increasing speed to market. We are thrilled to partner with such a prestigious group of investors, who will be instrumental in helping us bring our solution to even more innovative brands seeking to meet the on-demand needs of consumers," adds Andrew Klein, Chief Operating Officer of Backbone.