Manchester-based Sourceful is a platform that uses data to enable companies to source and manage eco-friendly products for their business. The company just announced that it raised $12.2 million (nearly £8.8 million) in funding.
Investment led by index Ventures
The financing round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Eka Ventures, Venrex and Dylan Field, founder of Figma. Danny Rimer, partner of Index Ventures, joins the board. Sourceful intends to use the funds to scale its current operating model and build its tech platform for sustainable sourcing. Also, it will invest in talent across sustainability, technology, marketing and operations. It aims to reach a team size of 60 by the end of 2021.
‘We built Sourceful because we wanted to strike at the root cause,’ said Sourceful’s CEO and co-founder Wing Chan. ‘It’s all very well to ask people to ‘shop responsibly’, but the reality is that consumers only have the choices that businesses offer, and it’s not fair to put the burden on individuals to constantly sacrifice cost and convenience.’
‘Today, businesses simply don’t have the tools to act: affordable solutions are scarce, accurate data is thin, and supply chains are complex,’ said Danny Rimer of Index Ventures. ‘Now, for the first time, Sourceful’s platform enables businesses to move from intention to action. Using Sourceful’s data driven platform, businesses can access the best suppliers and understand the implications of their supply chains in a way that wasn’t possible before. Sourceful is being led by founders with deep insight from one of the largest e-commerce infrastructure platforms in Europe, with a track record of hiring and managing high calibre teams.’
Sustainable sourcing and supply chain platform
Founded in 2020 by Wing Chan, Shiran Zheng and Mary Wang, Sourceful is an end-to-end sourcing and supply chain platform focused on sustainability. It uses science and data to help forward-thinking companies make informed decisions, understand their impact and drive continuous improvement.
Sourceful has worked with brands across the UK, EU and US to source eco-friendly packaging, merchandise and components. It has shipped over 1 million items and currently has over 40 carefully vetted suppliers in the UK and China. Its customer base spans food and beverage (Foundation Coffee House), fashion and accessories (Fenton), healthcare (Elder), and fast-growing online marketplaces (Floom and Stitched).
Sourceful has created a universal standard or protocol that can be used by buyers and suppliers alike to assess the sustainability impacts of different sourcing choices. These standards look at data on greenhouse gas emissions over the whole lifecycle of a product, from manufacture to shipping and logistics through to end of life. By surfacing this data, Sourceful not only allows companies to analyse their existing supply chains but also identify areas for improvement.
While a new capability is set to launch in 2022, the pre-release version already allows businesses to minimise their carbon footprint and to make products more cost-effective and of better quality. Sourceful has co-invested into Sourceful Climate, Europe’s first platform to give businesses access to support frontier carbon removal.
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