- CALA, a managed marketplace that provides a plug and play infrastructure for launching fashion brands, announced it raised $3 million
CALA — a managed marketplace that provides a plug and play infrastructure for creators to design and launch fashion brands — announced that it closed a $3 million investment. This round of funding was co-led by Maersk Growth (the venture arm of A.P. Moller-Maersk) and Real Ventures.
CALA’s platform is used by direct-to-consumer brands, influencers, and retailers for seamlessly designing and producing apparel in a completely digital-first way. And CALA bids out each project to the best fit partner in their network of global manufacturing partners thus 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 area 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 specializes in small batch production.
With a client base 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 middle of economic volatility. And CALA has signed over 20 new partnerships in the past 3 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, rap artist KSI, Deena Nicole Cortese of The Jersey Shore, Tabria Majors, and Colton Underwood.
Along with providing the infrastructure to build a brand, CALA believes deeply in the accessibility to experts and educational materials required to be successful. Last month, CALA launched 1MOQ — which is a weekly newsletter and content archive providing resources and industry commentary on how to build a successful fashion brand.
Key Quotes:
“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. We’re in the midst of an evolution in commerce that is centered around these niche digital audiences and CALA provides the easiest, most efficient way to conceptualize, launch and scale a digital-first brand.”
-Andrew Wyatt, CEO of CALA
“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. 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.”
-Sune Stilling, Head of Growth at Maersk
“In the same way that the internet democratized 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. 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.”
-Janet Bannister, Managing Partner at Real Ventures
