Turbine
Setting the Scene
Today’s shopper has countless destinations to purchase their favorite products, including in-store, a company’s website, Amazon, and social media. 🛍
But what happens behind the scenes after an order is placed?
It turns out that the ease of shopping across multiple channels isn’t so easy to track on the backend.
Companies must keep track of sales across every platform, which results in fragmented data, spreadsheet overload, and hours of manual labor. ⏳
This week’s company offers a platform that helps retail and e-commerce businesses manage their sales and operations in one place.
In a Sentence
Turbine is a platform that enables multi-channel retail and e-commerce businesses to centralize their workflows.
Multi-Channel: Companies selling on Shopify, Amazon, and more.
Workflows: Aggregates data across sales channels, accounting, inventory, forecasting, and supply chain workflows.
Bulleted Version:
- Turbine is like an air traffic control tower, centralizing and coordinating supply management so that no part of an e-commerce business needs to fly blindly. ✈️
The Basics
- Headquarters: Remote
- Employee Count: 5
- Investors:
Not publicly disclosed
- Funding amount: Not publicly disclosed
- Business model: B2B SaaS
- Early traction: $1m of orders moving through the platform per day, customers include Thursday Boots, Tomorrow Farms, and Stix
Due Diligence
WHAT WE LIKE
📈The future of e-commerce: As the retail landscape has evolved, Amazon accounts for 37% of e-commerce sales and nearly one-third of US consumers shop on social media, compelling businesses to adopt a multi-channel strategy.
✅ All-in-one: Turbine addresses pain points in the sizable supply chain management market by centralizing multiple retail channels and providing real-time data across operations for every type of end user.
🔢 Countless applications: The platform serves a broad range of customers, from an enterprise shoe company to an influencer managing inventory across their website and social media shop.
POTENTIAL RISKS
⚙️ Nice or need? Retail and e-commerce businesses use numerous tools to manage their operations, and while Turbine helps streamline operations, potential customers may be hesitant to add another platform to their suite of tools.
🤔 Integration complexity: Turbine must work with each customer to integrate their various sales channels and operational software, which requires ample resources and leads to longer onboarding times.
The company also relies on e-commerce partnerships, where changes in terms, API access, or rules could cause disruptions.
🏁 Competition: Turbine must stand out among established enterprise resourcing planning platforms (ERPs) and new entrants competing to be the go-to solution for centralizing e-commerce operations.
Founder Profile
Emilie Schario, CEO: Previously worked in data analytics at Netlify and Gitlab and supply chain analytics at Smile Direct Club.
Comps
Ordoro: Backed by Stage One Capital and E-Merge.
Fulfil: Backed by Extreme Venture Partners, 500 Global, and Rajan Anandan.
Singuli: Backed by Harlem Capital, High Alpha, Alumni Ventures, and others.
Synder: Backed by TMT Investments, Y Combinator, and Born Capital.
Why Turbine
By enabling e-commerce businesses to manage multi-channel operations, appealing to a broad end consumer, and rapidly adding features to continue to improve the multi-channel experience, Turbine is building a solution that blows us away. 💨