- Leading communication and execution platform for retailers Retail Zipline announced it raised $9.6 million
- This funding round was led by Emergence with participation from Serena Ventures (the investment arm of tennis pro Serena Williams)
Retail Zipline is a leading communication and execution platform for retailers that announced it raised $9.6 million in Series A recently. This round of funding was led by Emergence with participation from tennis professional Serena Williams via Serena Ventures. In conjunction with this funding round, Santi Subotovsky and Kara Egan of Emergence are joining Retail Zipline’s Board of Directors.
With this funding, it will fuel Retail Zipline’s growth as the company expands on its team and continues building products that improve the lives of retail associates — which is a demographic that comprises one in four American jobs but has been historically underserved.
“I spent a decade working at a top global retailer trying to engage store teams and make sure they delivered on our vision, but the solutions that were available didn’t solve our execution and communications challenges,“ said Melissa Wong, co-founder, and CEO of Retail Zipline. ”Other industries have benefited from new workflow tools, but retail has been left behind. That’s why we built Retail Zipline: we’re by retail, for retail. Our core mission is to build products that meet the needs of America’s most populous workforce: retail employees. We are grateful to have the support of Emergence and Serena Ventures, who have partnered with us to make our vision of improving retail worker’s lives and the in-store experience a near term reality.”
Top retailers like Lush Cosmetics, BevMo!, TOMS, Lumber Liquidators, the LEGO Group, and Torrid depends on Retail Zipline’s software for improving productivity and delivering a memorable in-store experience. Retail Zipline has more than 55,000 users across 8,000 stores using its solutions.
Retail Zipline offers small and larger retailers with the ability to take operational information like sales promotions, product launches, and best practices from HQ — which comes from many siloed departments, changes rapidly, and structures it in an intuitive and engaging way.
“We look for companies that are one-step ahead, shaping their strategies based not only on what the current market lacks, but where their industry is headed,” said Kara Egan, Principal at Emergence. “I’m excited to be partnering with a company that has created a new way to deliver engaging on-brand customer experiences by giving employees the right tools to execute HQ’s vision.”
Retail Zipline’s service makes it easy for employees in stores to understand the context, prioritize work, and collaborate with teammates quicker so they can deliver on the brand’s promises. The company’s current product suite was developed based on the feedback of tens of thousands of store employees, district managers, retail executives, and communication managers.
“Retail workers are among the 2.7 billion-person-strong portion of the workforce not sitting at a desk that’s been relatively left behind by new forms of tech that don’t address their pain points,” said Santi Subotovsky, General Partner at Emergence. “We saw a unique opportunity to partner with a company that’s changing the way the retail workforce works. Hearing Zipline customers rave about how the technology is making their businesses more effective and accountable inspired us to join the Zipline team on this journey to help brands build stronger relationships with their customers.”
And Retail Zipline offers four key applications that are accessible on mobile devices and desktops. This includes Messages and Tasks (communications and engagement platform that helps stores track information from HQ), Resource Library (centralized home for documents and multimedia that HQ can brand), Store Surveys (internal survey tool that reports results, feedback, and photos for each store in real-time), and Group Communication (two-way discussion platform that completes the feedback loop and enables stores to communicate with each other and with HQ).
“As someone with an incredibly active life, I understand the need to be dynamic, and capable of quickly adapting to shifting priorities, but I’m also aware of the stress a fast-paced work environment can impose,” said Serena Williams of Serena Ventures. “Retail Zipline is tackling this issue head-on in retail – a notoriously stressful industry – by pioneering products that help store associates get organized, communicate efficiently, and deliver amazing customer experiences. I’m excited to support them as they change the way retail works from the bottom up.”
