Anvyl, the production hub where brands manage their supply chains, was created by a founder who has seen the supply chain from multiple perspectives – the United States Army, Apple, and DTC shaving brand, Harry’s. While one may grapple to find similarities among these entities, one thing is for certain, there were holes, gaps, and miscommunication among in each of these chains. Anvyl’s platform acts as a single centralized location to bring visibility, scalability, and efficiency to a brand’s supply chain throughout the process from procurement to delivery. The platform features a pre-vetted list of cost-effective suppliers (only 1% of suppliers pass Anvyl’s strict audit process that looks for eco-friendliness, social responsibility, and more), purchase order management that allows users to store a shared record of change history, and a document management system to manage all the paperwork.
AlleyWatch sat down with founder Rodney Manzo to learn more about why Anvyl is the supply chain solution preferred by brands that include S’well, LOLA, and hims and to discuss the company’s recent funding round, which brings the total funding raised to $11.8M across three rounds.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
It was our Series A – $9.3M in a led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from existing investor First Round Capital and Company Ventures.
Tell us about the product or service that Anvyl offers.
Anvyl is a production hub where brands manage suppliers, oversee production, and track in-depth product data from procurement to delivery of inbound goods. It saves hours a day of manual work, reduces supply chain costs, and provides actionable data on supplier activity throughout sourcing, production, and the product lifecycle.
What inspired you to start Anvyl?
During my time in supply chain at the United States Army, Apple, and most recently at Harry’s, I have a deep appreciation for the gaps and opportunities in the market because I have lived through them. Previously, I had to manage suppliers relying on middle of the night conference calls, triangulating timelines across email, WeChat, and notes, and to flying across the globe to repeatedly deal with crises. I felt the pain of missed deadlines, quality issues, manual processes and the lack of data — all of which I am now determined to solve using better software. This is what brought me to start Anvyl – supply chain leaders need a single source of truth to bring visibility, scalability, and efficiencies across their day to day and global supply chain.
How is Anvyl different?
Anvyl provides a more modern, lightweight solution for an industry dominated by heavy legacy solutions, Anvyl’s main competitors share a few common comparisons.
Unlike decades-old legacy solutions that operate most efficiently as bundled, enterprise software, Anvyl offers the most impactful set of features without the complexity of solutions like Infor, SAP, or Netsuite. These competitors often require or strongly suggest the use of core CRM and ERP products and take months of expensive implementations to properly configure and deploy.
While some companies may benefit from a monolithic solution, most modern brands need more flexibility to invest in supply chain technology at a pace that makes sense for them. Digging through these complex product offerings and pricing tiers is exhausting—Anvyl offers respite from that, providing visibility in a clearly defined stage of the supply chain (from sourcing to goods received) and requiring nothing but a desire to keep supply chain operations agile and fast-moving.
While Anvyl’s competitors are upselling their product suites and locking in customers to bloated solution sets, Anvyl is building out integrations that let customers decide what their supply chain technology stack should look like.
What market does Anvyl target and how big is it?
The Anvyl team understands that an effectively managed supply chain is the competitive advantage of the future, and our success in capitalizing on a $12.2 billion supply chain software industry proves this. With a 13.9% year-over-year increase, our future has never been brighter.
Who do you consider to be your main competitors?
Our main competitors are spreadsheets and the more traditional supply chain software providers out there (i.e. NetSuite, SAP, Infor).
What’s your business model?
We are a SaaS – subscription fee for access to the platform where you can handle suppliers, POs, SKUs and logistics in one easy to use solution. If you need to source suppliers for your manufacturing, our carefully vetted suppliers admitted to our network pay a small commission fee for transactions.
What was the funding process like?
The funding process was focused around finding strategic investors that have had a track record of success in marketplaces and B2B software. After working with Redpoint over a few month span, we aligned on the vision of Anvyl and decided to move forward as a team. Ryan and Medha have been amazing investors and partners to Anvyl from day one. We also brought on the Company team who we have had the opportunity to get to know over the past year, as well as all of our current investors from our seed round. We have been very fortunate to have a world-class investor group supporting us from day one and look forward to working with them going forward.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Fundraising is always difficult and challenging no matter who you are. This stems from finding the right team to make sure the deal checked off all the boxes. We were able to get to a great outcome with a great partner but it took time across the entire Anvyl team for months.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
As challenger brands and e-commerce companies continue to proliferate, the need for better software and the desire to adopt the latest technology continues to grow rapidly.
With a solution for any supply chain team ready to upgrade its systems, our investors saw that Anvyl is here to help.
As challenger brands and e-commerce companies continue to proliferate, the need for better software and the desire to adopt the latest technology continues to grow rapidly.
With a solution for any supply chain team ready to upgrade its systems, our investors saw that Anvyl is here to help.
The market is always changing and brands need to have a tech-forward solution to their supply chain to stay at the forefront of industry trends. After hearing a number of successful client testimonials, our investors saw a need for a solution like Anvyl to exist.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
With our funding, we will be hiring world-class talent across engineering, marketing, as well as expanding our consumer goods and DTC base. We have plans to partner with other complementary providers in the logistics place to add integrations with our platform. Our goal is for Anvyl to be the first and last tool a supply chain leader looks at every day.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
There are a few pieces of advice that I received from day one. The first is that you have to know your customers. This can be done with interviews or simple prototypes that do not take funding. The next is to build as light as you can until you have revenue and/or funding to grow your business.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our main objective is to create a production hub where brands manage suppliers, oversee production, and track in-depth product data from procurement to delivery of inbound goods. We are aggressively focused on digitizing production and logistics for brands to save them time, money, and gain greater visibility in their supply chain.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
The food scene in NYC is unbelievable. Picking just one is extremely difficult. Bohemian is a place that I have always had a great experience. However, I love to try to find the best hamburger in the city and was excited when Au Cheval opened up. I no longer have to travel to Chicago to get one.
