Tag Startups

Can Stock Mfg. Co. Do For Clothes What Farmers Markets Did For Produce?

Amina Elahi 1 Comment

For decades, the only garments to come out of the 19,000-square-foot military-clothing factory at the corner of Lake and Pulaski in Garfield Park were sewn in muted shades of olive drab, gunmetal gray and navy blue. But in July, there came a whole different look: piles of brightly colored shirts, pocket squares and ties meant for Bucktown hipsters, not Pentagon bureaucrats.

Behind the colorful clothes are entrepreneur Jim Snediker, factory owner Areill Ives and three other co-founders of Stock Manufacturing. The quintet is betting their locally made duds will strike a vein of civic pride. Every piece of Stock clothing comes tagged “Proudly made in Chicago” — and backed by Snediker’s personal quality promise. “I guarantee,” he says. “You’re getting a damn good piece of clothing, and you’re getting it at an affordable price.”

Read more about this plucky new company by clicking here, and pick up a copy of Chicago Grid in this Sunday’s Sun-Times!

Braintree Acquires Venmo, Plans to Conquer Mobile Ecommerce

Amina Elahi

Braintree, Chicago’s own leader in online payments, is acquiring New York City-based mobile payments company Venmo for $26 million. This news comes less than three weeks after Braintree announced it would more than triple the size of its Chicago office. Both companies are backed by Accel Partners.

Earlier this month, Braintree CEO Bill Ready told us mobile commerce was one of two macrotrends on the minds of anyone in the online payments space. Already, mobile comprises one quarter of the $4 billion in credit card transactions Braintree processes per year. With his company’s acquisition of Venmo, it seems Ready and his team are pushing to take the mobile shopping challenge head-on.

And how will they do it? By pairing their processing power with Venmo’s digital wallet. While Braintree facilitates credit card payments for everyone from Disqus to Belly, Venmo makes it easy to swap funds with friends using a smartphone, and it’s the marriage of these separate but compatible services that looks to be a winning combination.

“By combining forces, Braintree and Venmo can continue to make the mobile shopping experience better for both merchants and consumers,” Ready said. For example, existing Venmo users will soon be able to use their digital wallets to place payments with any of the thousands of online merchants who utilize Braintree to process transactions. Ready sees this acquisition as an opportunity to bolster his company’s mobile offerings, by keeping up with the growing practice of mobile shopping and giving developers and consumers “a different set of tools to thrive in a mobile world.”

Read more at Built In Chicago.

CakeStyle Bags $1M to Change the Way Women Shop Online

Amina Elahi

“Personal shopper.” This phrase, though brief, has sent many a woman’s heart aflutter. The idea that another person, an expert, would look at you and understand your style and figure out your body type and then dress you—the concept is nothing short of a fantasy. E-commerce fashion provider CakeStyle wants to make that dream a reality, by shipping packages of pre-selected items straight to women’s doors. Some might call it the Trunk Club of women’s fashion. I call it the latest Chicago startup to score another round of funding. CakeStyle announced yesterday a $1 million raise from Sandbox Industries’ Sandbox Advantage Fund.

According to reports, CakeStyle boxes range from $2,800 to $3,000 apiece. That’s a steep price tag, but one women are apparently willing to pay—with thousands of new customers and shipments reaching six times the number they were at the start of the year, business has been good. CEO and cofounder Cecelia Myers acknowledges that word of mouth has been instrumental to CakeStyle’s growth. She and her team plan to put their funding to work for marketing and expanding into other cities, and that includes building on this system.

“The first step will be building a strong referral program to turn existing customers in [new] cities into brand ambassadors,” Myers said. “Next, we want to share our style advice in the local markets through press and style events.” Such events will allow CakeStyle to demonstrate how the company can provide customized services to women in cities as different as Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

More on CakeStyle and its plans to expand out of Chicago here.

Target Data Raises $1 Million from Facebook Investor

Amina Elahi

Moving is a stressful process for the people doing it, certainly, but also for the marketers trying to reach them at that time. Target Data is a marketing solutions company that’s built its business on using big data and analytics to reach people in the pre-moving stage. Their objective is to make it easier for marketers to reach those people—frenzied though they may be—before they move. Their just-announced round of funding, $1 million from Bay Area firm Western Technology Investments (WTI), is a vote of confidence that they’re doing something right.

Last spring, Target Data raised $3 million in a round led by Apex Venture Partners. “We will use the new funds to continue to invest in world class talent, specifically analytics and marketing strategy positions,” said president and CEO Ross Shelleman. “We will also use the funds to launch a new digital offering where we will work with third parties to translate our offline data to online data for targeted display advertising.”

For marketers, movers are a valuable audience. Not only are they looking for a number of services as they pack up one home and head to another, they are also in the market for lots of new goods to stock their new abodes. Their struggle is getting their messages in front of people before they move, and that’s where Target Data comes in.

Learn more about Target Data and WTI here.