After a successful seed round at the beginning of 2021 and the subsequent strong growth, the Düsseldorf-based sustainability start-up Retraced was able to win Alstin Capital as a new lead investor in a second round of financing and will receive a total of 6.5 million euros in capital, of which 4 million euros from Alstin.
The venture capitalist F-LOG Ventures, which focuses on logistics-related investments, and existing investor Samaipata complete the round. The newly collected capital is to be used primarily for the further development and automation of the platform and the expansion of the company.
“We clearly see the great need for a quick and effective response to the new legal obligations from our platform usage, which has increased tenfold over the past twelve months. We are using the new capital to further develop our platform and to enable more and more automated analyzes and evaluations for our partners. We want to register around 30,000 suppliers on our platform by the end of 2023,” comments Retraced CEO and co-founder Lukas Pünder.
“We have known the Retraced founding team for some time and are impressed by the strong development of the company. We are confident that Retraced will lead the supply chain visibility market in Europe and see a strong match with our European B2B & Regtech expertise,” says Noel Zeh, Partner at Alstin Capital.
Vague sustainability claims and their hunch have made headlines in recent weeks, and the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LKSG) will oblige larger companies in Germany from 2023 to make their production standards verifiable and traceable. This is exactly where Retraced comes in with its platform, which brings textile manufacturers and suppliers closer together in order to exchange and evaluate compliance data from the supply chain and make it transparent and traceable.
“Sustainable and social compliance regulations are on the rise. Many Western countries, including the US, France and Germany, have passed increasingly stringent compliance requirements for fashion and textile companies over the past year. In order to be able to comply with these in the future, they need traceable supply chains,” confirms Retraced CPO and co-founder Philipp Mayer.
More than 80 international fashion companies are currently using the Retraced platform, including Marc O’Polo, Joop, Galeria and Strellson.