The fast growing direct-to-consumer apparel company, Claude, that aims to be everyone’s go to brand for going shopping has just announced the closing of its seed round.
This independent brand that introduces relevant elevated looks has been busy stealing the hearts of the global market, stepping out from the comfort zone of domestic base and successfully penetrate international waters, from Southeast Asia, to Europe, to the United States. Suspected to be one of the first brands from Indonesia that are daring to be global and succeeded. “In this globalized world where technology enables us to cross-border real-time, becoming global immediately enhances your total addressable market hundred times over while simultaneously strengthening the strong brand equity we carefully preserve”, Co-Founder and CEO Tommy Budihardjo says.
Revolutionary in its business model, Claude uses micro-batches system for new designs and produces more only after the demand is proven, hence minimizing waste while enhancing the speed in offering of new designs. Combined with its own real-time analysis, Claude understand the customers’ behaviour and taste real time and therefore can adapt instantly. “Apparel industry is one of the biggest contributor of waste – especially due to unsold stock – the industry is overdue for a change, and we are happy to lead the charge with our business model that successfully cut finished goods waste by 90% and maximize the revenue and profitability at the same time”, the CEO stated.
Claude’s latest round will be used to enhance current product offerings and strengthen the market it has already penetrated. The fund was led by one of the early-backers of Tokopedia and Kakao Corp, CyberAgent Capital and supported by the family office Prima Fund I. “Indonesia is one of the largest consumer retail markets in the world. With Claude’s strong brand value along with the experiences brought by the management team, we believe that the company could bring its unique value propositions and be well-accepted by the huge Indonesian and SEA apparel markets.”, says Nobuaki Kitagawa, Managing Director of CyberAgent Capital, Inc.