Capital As A Service
How the world’s largest eCommerce investor helps brands navigate the post-pandemic waters
In McKinsey and Company's COVID-19: Implications for Business report, retail trade is projected to be one of the industry sectors to recover first following the pandemic. However, McKinsey warns that small businesses in the U.S. will need to make extreme changes to survive and prosper, requiring innovative "business models and technology solutions that few have the resources to finance."
The world's largest eCommerce investor, Clearbanc, may have a solution for that. Earlier this year, Clearbanc launched an automated Angel Investor platform: ClearAngel. The platform provides early-stage brands with equity-free capital, data-driven goal setting and to-do lists, strategies, AI-generated custom data insights, and connections to manufacturers, advisers, and offline wholesalers. Startups need to make around $1,000 in monthly revenue to qualify for equity-free cash. In return, founders pay up to 2% of their revenue over four years.
ClearBanc stated that they created the platform for 40,000+ companies, or 90% of the brands that sought investment from them that didn't qualify for Clearbanc capital. At launch, ClearAngel prioritized building a wholesale pillar on their platform after receiving a "big push" from the founders' community. ClearAngel now connects founders to Flair, an exclusive wholesale marketplace that provides curated, unique (read: not on Amazon) inventory items to stores.
A combination of capital, networks, strong in-store and online presence, and access to technology sounds like an excellent formula for ingenious retail businesses to thrive in the post-pandemic era, where being nimble is the norm.
