Competition in the e-commerce market is intensifying and merchants are seeking to differentiate themselves from a growing sea of choices available to consumers. By seamlessly integrating personalized products into the product mix, merchants and brands can scale their offerings to consumers with minimal resources. Gooten is an order management system that allows online merchants and brands to offer on-demand manufacturing of printed items from over 45+ global manufacturers shipping from 75+ locations. Merchants gain access to 250+ different products and 14000+ SKUS that can be produced and shipped in under six days across a vast array of custom products in apparel, homewares. wall art, baby and pet products. accessories, and holiday-themed items. All products are sourced from vetted suppliers, minimizing risk and reducing cost, all while increasing the opportunities for sales and reach. Gooten’s platform is already natively integrated with leading e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Etsy, and Shopify; an API is also available to handle custom integrations to ensure seamless fulfillment.
AlleyWatch caught up with Gooten CEO Brian Rainey to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the company’s total funding raised to $35.5M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Series A. Led by KEC Ventures and Touchdown Ventures / INX International. The total round closed at $11M.
Tell us about the product or service that Gooten offers.
Gooten is an order management technology and services company built to deliver best-in-classon-demand production experiences for global commerce brands and their customers. Order fulfillment technology and supply chain management solutions have existed for traditional pick/pack/ship retail sales models for 25 years. These legacy systems aren’t built for print on-demand and the opportunities and challenges unique to an inventory-free fulfillment world – Gooten is solving that. By eliminating the need for inventory management and upfront investments, Gooten enables businesses to create and deliver products quickly and cost-effectively while maintaining industry-leading quality.
What inspired the start of Gooten?
Gooten was inspired by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, whose revolutionary creation transformed the sharing of knowledge and ushered in a new era of human history. Just like Gutenberg’s invention facilitated the democratization of knowledge, Gooten was founded to solve similar challenges for online commerce: helping eCommerce businesses scale more efficiently and deliver a superior product offering while democratizing access to on-demand production capabilities globally.
How is Gooten different?
To our knowledge, Gooten is the only enterprise-grade order management solution in the market for print on-demand. We have flexible and robust technology, a deep set of professional services, and an innovative approach to solving complex supply chain problems. The Gooten software solution can pass the most robust security, compliance, and legal diligence processes, having successfully navigated the requirements of publicly traded retailers and platforms. Our proprietary technology makes intelligent decisions on how to efficiently produce every order, adding profit and customer delight to our customers’ experience.
What market does Gooten target and how big is it?
We’re focused on bringing on-demand production to retail and global brands across apparel, home decor, hard goods, and textiles, a multi-billion dollar market opportunity.
What’s your business model?
Gooten monetizes off of our software and services as we facilitate transactions between demand (eCommerce brands, platforms, and marketplaces) and supply (manufacturers, logistics providers).
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Gooten helps businesses streamline their operations by outsourcing common business services – sourcing products, fulfillment, customer service to name a few – and redoubling their investments in connecting with their customers. Our solution is particularly relevant in a market downturn when businesses are looking to trim opex and find new ways to grow. We’re accelerating our customer outreach to help businesses understand that they no longer need to insource these capabilities, while driving the opportunity to reach a larger audience on an inventory-free basis.
What was the funding process like?
It’s an interesting time to be raising capital. The macroeconomic climate is becoming more difficult, impacted further by the recent banking situation in our industry. From the beginning, we wanted to ensure we found the right partner who believes in our vision and market as we are quite close to profitability as a company. Alignment with our vision was very important to us.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Most venture capitalists have a strong preference for traditional SaaS models so our revenue model (which is a mix of transactional and recurring revenue) can be a bit challenging for some investors to get comfortable with despite our excellent customer retention rates and robust forecasting process.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Excitement about our pipeline and customer traction alongside a shared vision for how on-demand manufacturing will revolutionize retail supply chains. Our ability to increase customer efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact caused by merchandising was something we are very aligned on with our investment partners.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
From a financial standpoint, we’re focused on reaching profitability by Q1 2024. On the customer side, we plan to have 2-3 significant new case studies in our mid-market/platform partnership segment. On the technology side, launching the Gooten NextGen platform, our revolutionary new order management architecture that will support the largest brands and marketplaces at scale, will meet existing customer needs while increasing adoption across a number of industry verticals.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
If you have a revenue and an expense problem, you have to work on solving both. Expense discipline is necessary in this market but doesn’t replace or solve for growth.
If you have a revenue and an expense problem, you have to work on solving both. Expense discipline is necessary in this market but doesn’t replace or solve for growth.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
As a global company, many members of the Gooten team will be in our Bogota, Colombia office for a leadership retreat in August, so we’ll be going to airports quite soon. Strategically, we believe our market continues on a change trajectory that’s been sped up since the onset of the pandemic, and the application of a flexible software solution will become increasingly important as merchants and retailers look to build resiliency in their supply chains.
With a plethora of commuting options in the city, how do you typically get to work each day?
I use Revel multiple times a day, which both supports another great New York startup and is by far the best way around the city. Shoutout to Frank and Paul!
