News Archive

Tailor Brands, a branding platform and AI-powered logo-design company, has raised $50 million in Series C funding, as announced on Thursday, July 22. The company, headquartered in Tel Aviv and New York, aims to use the funds to create a one-stop SaaS Platform that will provide design, marketing, and branding services for small businesses. The platform will come bundled with everything aspiring entrepreneurs need to kick-start their business. “Users are looking for us to provide them with everything, so we are starting to incorporate more products with the goal of creating an ecosystem, like WeChat, where you don’t need to leave the platform at all to manage your business,” Yali Saar, co-founder and CEO of Tailor Brands, said. The investment round was led by web-hosting giant GoDaddy and backed up by investor firm Our Crowd, along with existing investors Armat Group, Disruptive VC, Mangrove Capital Partners, Pitango Growth, and Whip Media founder Richard Rosenblatt. Tailor Brands raised $15.5 million in Series B, which brings the Israeli company’s funding total to $70 million in the seven years since its 2014 launch. “GoDaddy is empowering everyday entrepreneurs around the world by providing all of the help and tools to succeed online. We are excited to invest in Tailor Brands — and its team — as we believe in their vision. Their platform truly helps entrepreneurs start their business quickly and easily with AI-powered logo design and branding services,” said Andrew Morbitzer, vice president of corporate development at GoDaddy. Small businesses are often in need of cost-effective solutions to start their entrepreneurial endeavors. Online services often prove to be less costly than brick-and-mortar counterparts, and Tailor Brands is a prime example of this. However, an online logo-builder that provides a unique brand identity is only the first step. Small businesses often need to seek online legal services to help them out with administration, online bookkeeping and accounting services, as well as an insurance provider. Because of all that, having a one-stop shop for marketing and branding such as Tailor Brands might make that journey to commercial success that much easier.

Disney announced that a fifth of its brick-and-mortar stores would close by the end of the year in the rapid shift toward eCommerce caused by the pandemic.First on the shutdown list of 60 stores are North American locations, all scheduled to close either on or before March 24, 2021. Disney is currently closing several stores in Arizona, California, and Texas, among others.These changes are part of a bigger plan for eCommerce development. European stores might be hit next, but the media giant has yet to announce which of its 300 stores will go under in the future.In 2020, eCommerce retail sales jumped by 32.4%, signaling the move away from conventional shopping. These are grim news for those fans who consider the stores an essential part of the Disney experience. However, they can look forward to an overhaul of Disney’s online store in the near future. Disney has promised significant improvements to its e-shop, with more adult apparel collections, streetwear, premium home products, and collectibles. Considering that Disney stores are usually focused on creating a magical experience for kids, this improvement will undoubtedly cater to a much wider audience. Disney’s partnership with Target for more than 50 locations with Disney pop-up shops within the retail giant’s megastores is also in danger. On the plus side, more than 600 Disney Parks stores, third-party retailers, lifestyle, and outlet locations will remain unaffected by these closures. To say goodbye to a fifth of its shops, Disney is currently running a 30%-off storewide sale, with discount coupons for shopping at the online store. On a much happier note, after keeping its gates closed for a year, Disneyland has finally been cleared to reopen in April. The Walt Disney World Resort in Florida has been open since June 2020, but strict state regulations have kept its California counterpart closed until now. Both are and will be operating under the necessary safety measures due to the pandemic. Backed by these announcements, Disney stocks are also flying high, increasing by 6.33% within one day. The latest Disney animated feature, “Raya and the Last Dragon,” taking a whopping $8.6 million on its opening weekend certainly played a significant part in this increase.

The NYC-based brick-and-mortar kids’ clothes and toys retailer filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, reporting that it had raised $10.5 million in funding.The company offered its equity-only stocks, aiming to gather $11 million but it came $500,000 short of it. Camp secured funds from 5 different investors, the SEC filing reveals, with the first investment made at the beginning of April.Camp is a New York City retail concept store that offers goods and experiences for children. It opens its doors seven days a week to the general public and its members alike. Both can purchase toys and clothing but also partake in the many family activities organized by the store. The family experience store provides fun and educational activities that range from dance and improv classes to arts and crafts and even kids yoga. A Camp membership card offers many perks, including access to two free activities a day, guest passes so that you can bring your friends along for the adventure, and complimentary refreshments. The free date night drop-off is among the highly popular members-only benefits, as it allows parents to enjoy three hours of alone time, knowing that their little ones are well taken care of and amused at Camp.With just one store on 5th Avenue at the moment, the brick-and-mortar retailer has announced it will open another one in Brooklyn soon without specifying the date or the exact location.Who is behind this project?Ben Kaufman is the founder and CEO of this camp-themed retail store that opened in December 2018. According to his Linkedin profile, he began working on the project in June last year.Apart from his role at Camp, he also works at Buzzfeed as the Chief Marketing Officer. He ventured into retail twice before founding the NYC-based shop. Back in 2005, Kaufman started his iPod accessories and batteries retail business called Mophie. He expanded his offer to smartphones before selling the company in 2016. Kaufman’s second, less successful venture was called Quirky. The company wanted to “make invention accessible” by bringing together a community of inventors, filtering out ideas, and helping to manufacture and launch the final product. He founded Quirky in 2009 and managed to raise more than $185 million in debt and equity funding before filing for bankruptcy in 2016.Even though Kaufman didn’t keep Quirky afloat, it’s precisely thanks to this project that he was able to secure RRE as an investor in Camp. RRE’s Jim Robinson who represented the VC company in Series A funding of Quirky was listed as an investor in Camp in September 2018, as reported in an earlier SEC filing submitted by Ben Kaufman.

Kaiyun Motors, a producer of mini electric vehicles from China, has been selling its tiny electric pickups in the U.S. and Europe since May 2019, cracking two of the world’s toughest markets as car sales decline in China.Even though Kaiyun Motors’ sales in these two competitive markets have been modest so far with less than a hundred vehicles sold since May, the company founder Wang Chao is optimistic about attracting new customers in the following months.The Chinese manufacturer has been around since 2014 and produces a small pickup truck called model called Pickman. The miniature electric vehicles, which can develop a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour, have found its buyers mostly in California, France, Spain, and Sweden. In the U.S., Kaiyun Pickman sold 40 units, and another 30 were shipped to Europe.Despite slow sales in the first few months of breaking into the U.S. market, Kaiyun Motors aims to sell between 3,000 and 4,000 vehicles in the country by the end of next year. When it comes to European sales forecasts, the carmaker refrained from making any predictions.The Pickman model can be purchased in the U.S. for the affordable price of $7,999, which includes a 25% import tax. The company decided to offer the same price to its European customers even though it pays zero tax to export to Europe. However, Kaiyun Motors needs to make some adjustments to the tiny pickup before it is approved for driving on public roads in the EU.“Mini-electric vehicles are more than enough to meet consumers’ daily needs,” Wang Chao told Bloomberg in an interview back in January, when he announced the firm got approved for selling in the states.American consumers, accustomed to large gasoline-powered pickups like the Ford F-250 which can haul more than 2,200 lbs at a 100-miles-per-hour speed, might disagree with this statement. On the other hand, Pickman comes with a much more affordable price tag than the Ford F-250 (with a price tag of $33,000). Moreover, it can manage trips around large construction sites, farms, and plants.Low-speed electric vehicles, powered by cheaper lead-acid batteries than its normal-sized counterparts, are prevalent in China. In 2017, the Chinese bought nearly 1.8 million such cars, which is equal to double the sales of regular electric vehicles like Tesla during the same period. Kaiyun Motors has sold around 4,900 models of Pickman in China this year.

Gusto, a SaaS company that provides cloud-based payroll, benefits, and human resource management solutions to small businesses, has announced earlier today that it raised $200 million in series D funding, at a valuation of $3.8 billion.The San Francisco-based startup attracted new investors like Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Generation Investment Management while keeping its previous backers T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Dragoneer Investment Group, and General Catalyst.One year ago, the company was valued at $2 billion when it raised $140 million in round C. The HR platform geared at small business owners has amassed more than $516 million since it was founded by Edward Kim, Josh Reeves, and Tomer London in 2012.Since its inception, Gusto’s self-described “people platform” has been addressing a number of HR-related functions like providing payroll services, employee onboarding, time tracking, retirement, and in recent years, health insurance. It also offers team management tools.The human resources platform currently employs more than 1,000 workers, with its Denver office being the largest. Established in 2015, the Denver branch currently boasts 600 employees. According to Gusto’s CEO and co-founder Josh Reeves, the company will use a portion of the newly raised funds to double the staff in Denver, grow its Bay Area team, and open up a new Research and Development office in New York City.“We’re excited about being in NY, and that’s all about accessing more technical talent, particularly in the financial services area, but also in general in the city’s growing tech ecosystem,” Reeves told Crunchbase News.He added the company plans on investing “quite a bit” in developing fintech by adding more functionality to the getting-paid-early feature of its software. Another substantial part of the money raised will be invested in services that help small businesses offer health insurance to their workers. “Healthcare in America is pretty complex. Over time we want to make healthcare more accessible,” said Reeves. “I feel like the scale is just beginning for us. Only 50% of small businesses make it to year five. We would love to increase the longevity for small businesses.” Apart from announcing the capital raise, Gusto also shared the news of welcoming Anne Raimondi, a SaaS industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in scaling technology businesses, to its Board of Directors.In fact, the company has been rounding out its executive team since last year’s round C. Danielle Brown, who was Google's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, has recently joined Gusto in the role of Chief People Officer whereas Fredrick Lee, the former Chief Information Security Officer at Square, has become the new CISO.

The Wharton Small Business Development Center, a division of the Snider Research Center of Wharton Entrepreneurship, is closing at the end of July.The decision was made after two years of careful assessment. The number of existing small-business support services in the area and their impact were prime factors. Wharton decided it’s no longer as useful and rewarding in the role of a small business supporter due to the abundant availability of similar resources. Instead, Wharton is expected to focus on “evidence-based entrepreneurship,” according to Karl Ulrich, vice dean of entrepreneurship and innovation at Wharton, who oversees the Wharton SBDC. This term stands for translating the useful and practical but still somewhat scholarly literature on what makes a business successful into actionable tools.For almost 40 years, thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs have benefited from Wharton’s free and low-cost services. Highly esteemed Ivy League business professors and students contributed to the once indispensable resource for U.S. startups. Sabre Systems, Urban Outfitters, and Destination Maternity all sought advice from this once prominent institution. Della Clark is the president of another such business - the Enterprise Center. This West Philadelphia nonprofit has been preparing minorities for entrepreneurship since 1989, when it was founded by Wharton SBDC. “We wouldn’t exist today if they didn’t have the vision to open up the Enterprise Center,” she said.As a part of the Wharton program, participating students and professors would assist entrepreneurs in putting together business and marketing plans, applying for bank loans, and overcoming strategic issues. Every year, the program provided one-on-one training to between 350 and 550 clients, along with workshops for another 500 of them. Wharton Small Business Development Center is a division of the Snider Research Center of Wharton Entrepreneurship. The state Department of Community and Economic Development, as well as the U.S. Small Business Association, have been contributing to the program with a total of $500,000 per year.  “Because Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship priorities are not fully aligned with the PA SBDC mission, we would prefer to release our public funding back to the network so that those resources can be deployed at other SBDCs around the commonwealth,” Ulrich commented.Ulrich added that there is another contributing factor to the closing of Wharton other than the proliferation of privately owned incubators for startups in Philadelphia. Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, chose to put special emphasis on technology and life sciences as future entrepreneurial ventures. The result was the Pennovation Center—a tech-focused incubator opened in 2016, back when Wharton’s future was first called into question. On Monday, Ernie Post, state director of Pennsylvania Small Business Development Centers, stated that about 75% of the funding initially meant for Wharton SBDC will be allocated to Widener SBDC, in an effort to expand its influence beyond Delaware County into Philadelphia.Lenin Agudo, director of Widener SBDC, said his mission is to form partnerships with entrepreneurial groups in the Philadelphia area. “It’s a big challenge, but at the same time it’s an opportunity to deliver innovative programming to Philadelphia-area entrepreneurs,” Agudo said.