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Building a smarter supply chain
Today we’re announcing that we have raised a $12 million funding round led by Menlo Ventures. I’m also excited to share more about the problem we’re tackling at Alloy and the ambitious goals we have set for ourselves.
Alloy’s mission is to help companies operate more responsive and efficient supply chains that intelligently adjust to consumer demand. Sounds simple, but in practice, supply chains are incredibly complex networks. They span dozens of companies and countries with an ever-increasing array of products, moving $20 trillion in goods every year! It takes an incredible amount of coordination to get the products that we take for granted — like bananas, cars and toothpaste — into our hands. They’re manufactured, checked, moved, stored, picked, packaged and shipped multiple times before they ever reach us.
Helping consumer goods brands
My co-founders and I started Alloy because, for all their complexity, supply chains lack a modern technology platform to connect and optimize them end-to-end. It’s a huge problem, so we knew we needed to tackle one area at a time to do excellent work. We started with consumer demand. Why? The entire purpose of a supply chain is to serve the end customer, but this “demand signal” is often poorly and inefficiently measured.
A typical consumer goods company often sells through dozens of partners — including traditional retailers and ecommerce sites — as well as directly to consumers. As a result, companies don’t have full, easy insight into how their products are selling across channels, retailers and geographies. They struggle to see and manage inventory across these vast networks of distribution centers and stores, resulting in operational inefficiencies and lost revenues.
A modern solution
Alloy’s platform connects and aggregates the data siloed among retailers, distributors, third-party logistics providers, manufacturers and suppliers that are involved in servicing demand. We track point-of-sale, orders, inventory levels, freight movement, forecasts and production schedules to provide a single point of truth about your demand, your inventory and whether your supply and demand are balanced.
My co-founders and I started Alloy because, for all their complexity, supply chains lack a modern technology platform to connect and optimize them end-to-end.
Our software application provides full visibility into your products — where they are and how fast they are moving . It provides smart notifications that automatically flag problems and opportunities, including out-of-stocks, deviations from forecast, excess inventory, shifts in demand patterns and more. We invest heavily in our user experience and are proud that our users span all sorts of divisions within our customers, from sales and marketing to supply chain and finance.
Continuing our growth
I’m incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished to-date. We have assembled an amazing group of doers. We have also been fortunate to work with a great group of forward-thinking customers that share our vision for the future of digital supply chain technology, ranging from strong young brands like billie and Walker & Company to multiple Global 2000 corporations.
But our work has just begun. With this additional investment, we will accelerate our product development, scale our go-to-market team and enable smarter, more responsive supply chain management for our customers. If you would like to learn more, please reach out. Or come join us, we’re hiring!
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