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Oro, an open source ecommerce platform co-created by Magento’s cofounder and former CTO, today announced it has raised $13 million in a strategic growth round of funding.

Founded in 2012, Los Angeles-based Oro’s platform constitutes a range of applications, including OroCommerce, its flagship B2B ecommerce platform for building storefronts and marketplaces; OroMarketplace, an end-to-end management platform specifically for marketplace businesses; a customer relationship management platform (CRM) called OroCRM; and OroPlatform, a rapid web app development platform.

While similar players in the space such as Shopify and Magento largely (though not exclusively) focus on B2C brands, Oro targets its ecommerce infrastructure squarely at B2B companies such as manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and wholesalers. This, according to Oro CEO and cofounder Yoav Kutner, is more complex to execute than B2C.

“B2B ecommerce has a very different dynamic to B2C commerce — instead of high-volume transactional purchases with a rotating cast of consumers, B2B brands focus on high-value deals with a smaller group of loyal customers,” Kutner told TechCrunch. “As such, B2B digital commerce solutions need to be able to accommodate the complex needs of business buyers, with large orders, split shipments, customized quotes, and many other capabilities, while also supporting rich ongoing customer engagement and personalized offerings.”

But on top of all that, B2B buyers now expect the kind of usability they have become accustomed to with B2C platforms they may use elsewhere in their everyday lives, which means that B2B merchants have had to up their game.

“One of the key challenges is delivering robust and feature-rich enterprise-grade sales tools, while also delivering a consumer-grade purchasing experience, with sleek and streamlined discovery, purchasing, and tracking options,” Kutner added.

Things get even more complex when you consider that a single seller might have completely different and distinct markets for their goods. Kutner cited an example involving a glassware manufacturer, who might have to introduce separate sales portals targeting the medical and catering sectors, for instance. This also might require the seller to set different pricing structures for each vertical, something that Oro enables through a so-called “dynamic pricing engine” that automatically calculates new prices or discounts based on pre-set rules and business logic defined by the seller.

“Coordinating those operations behind the scenes brings special challenges for B2B companies and ecommerce providers,” Kutner said.

The story so far

Alongside two cofounders Jary Carter and Dima Soroka, Kutner launched Oro a little more than a decade ago shortly after leaving Magento which he’d sold to eBay the previous year for around $180 million. Adobe ended up buying Magento for $1.68 billion in 2018 and rebranded it as Adobe Commerce.

Oro is a similar proposition to Magento in several ways, perhaps chief among them being its open source foundations which affords more flexibility over things like hosting and deployment, while also allowing companies to tweak and adapt things to their own use-cases.

This means that companies can host Oro on their own infrastructure if they wish, or deploy it across any combination of on-premises or public and private clouds.

“Users can also easily and rapidly switch between deployment models — for example, if an on-premises customer needs to rapidly scale up, and leverage private or public cloud infrastructure in response to a spike in web traffic,” Kutner said. “And our hybrid approach also puts customers in control of their data: if they want to run most workloads in the cloud, but operate their own secure data center, for instance, Oro makes that entirely possible. There’s really no limit to the ways that customers can leverage our hosting options to suit their needs.”

Prior to now, Oro had raised $12 million back in 2016, and with another $13 million in the bank, Kutner said that the company plans to “shake up the digital commerce industry for many years to come.”

Oro’s latest cash injection was led by Zubr Capital, with participation from existing investor Highland Europe.

Oro, an open-source B2B ecommerce platform from Magento’s cofounder, raises $13M by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

A day after launching an annual subscription for Twitter Blue, the social media company has extended the paid plan to users on Android. Individuals will have to pay $11 per month if they buy the Twitter Blue plan through Android. The pricing, same as that on iOS, is higher than the $8 offering for those who subscribe through a web browser.

It’s likely that Elon Musk & co. wants to avoid paying fees for in-app purchases to Google (as they did with Apple). So users will have to pay more.

To recap, the Twitter Blue plan is now available across platforms in six countries: the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Twitter Blue subscribers currently get features likethe blue verification mark, longer video uploads, andpriority ranking in conversation replies. Other features include a thread reader, the ability to edit tweet and custom icons and themes.

Twitter launched its annual subscription plan at $84 a year on Monday. It is the cheapest way to get the Blue subscription plan, but given how the company has pushed and pulled features, there is no guarantee that the current set of benefits will be available for a year.

Now that Twitter’s new paid plan is available on all platforms, we have to wait and see if it proves to be the big money maker that Musk has hoped for. Earlier this week, Financial Times reported that Twitter will be due for interest payment on the loans worth nearly $13 billion that Musk took to purchase the company by the end of the month. So Twitter would want its subscription revenues to up stat.

Twitter Blue is now available on Android at the same price as iOS by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

In recent years, working for, or banking with, a traditional financial institution was decidedly uncool. Far cooler was working for or banking with one of the many fintech startups that seemed to thumb their nose at stodgy bank brands.

Then the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, stocks tanked, and a lot of fintech outfits that appeared to be doing well began looking far less hardy and hale. The question begged now is whether fintech as a theme has lost its mojo.

According to VCs Mercedes Bent of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Victoria Treyger of Felicis, and Jillian Williams of Cowboy Ventures, the answer is resoundingly “no.” In a panel discussion hosted by this editor late last week in San Francisco, however, the investors didn’t sugarcoat things. Led by moderator Reed Albergotti — technology editor of the news platform Semafor — all three acknowledged a variety of challenges in the industry right now, even as they outlined opportunities.

On the challenges front, startups and their backers clearly got ahead of themselves during the pandemic, Albergotti suggested, observing that fintech was “going gangbusters” when “everyone was working from home” and “using lending apps and payment apps” but that times have turned “tough” as Covid has faded into the background.

“SoFi is down,” he said. “PayPal is down.” He brought up Frank, the college financial aid platform that was acquired by JPMorgan in the fall of 2021 by blatantly lying to the financial services giant about its user base. Said Albergotti, “They don’t really have 4 million customers.”

Williams agreed, but said there are positives and negatives for fintechs right now. On the positive side, she said, “from a consumer standpoint, it’s still rather early days” for fintech startups. She said that “demand and desire from the consumer” still exists for new and better alternatives to traditional financial institutions” based on the data she has seen.

More problematic, said Williams, is “that a lot of these companies have to fix their business models, and a lot of the ones that went public probably should not have. A lot of the usage is still there, but some of the fundamentals need to be shifted.” (Many outfits, for example, spent too heavily on marketing, or right now face rising delinquency costs, having used comparatively loose underwriting standards compared with some of their traditional counterparts.)

Further, Williams added, “The banks are not dumb. I do think they have awakened and continue to wake up to things they can do better.”

Treyger also voiced concerns. “Certain sectors of financial services are going to have a brutal year ahead,” she said, “and in particular lending. We will see very large losses coming through in lending . . . because unfortunately, it’s like a triple whammy: consumers lose their jobs, interest rates [rise] and the cost of capital is higher.”

It’s a challenge for a lot of players, including bigger outfits, Treyger said, noting that “even the big banks announced that they are doubling their loan loss reserves.” Still, she said, it could prove worse for young fintechs, many of which have “have not managed through a downturn — they started lending in the last six years or so” and which is where she expects to “see the most casualties.”

Meanwhile, Bent, who leads a lot of Lightspeed’s Latin America investments and is on the boards of two Mexico-based fintechs, seemed to suggest that while U.S. fintechs may be facing serious headwinds, fintech outfits outside the U.S. are continuing to perform well, perhaps because there were fewer alternatives to begin with.

It “just depends which country you’re in,” said Bent, noting that the U.S. has “one of the highest adoptions of fintech and wealth management services, whereas in Asia, they are actually much higher in lending and their consumer fintech services.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, said all three. Treyger recounted, for example, that before becoming a VC, when she was part of the founding team at since-acquired SMB lender Kabbage. There, “once a month, we would meet with the new innovation arm that has just been formed by bank XYZ,” she said with a laugh. “And they would want to learn how you get ideas and how to drive innovation.”

What “happens in a downturn is CEOs and CFOs cut back on the areas that are not critical,” Treyger continued, “and I think what’s going to happen, is that all of these innovation arms are going to be cut.”

When they are, she said, it will create “significant opportunity for fintechs that are building products that basically add to the bottom line.” CFOs, after all, are “all about profitability. So, how do you reduce fraud rates? How do you improve payment reconciliation? That’s where I think there is a lot of opportunity in 2023.”

If you’re a fintech founder, investor, or regulator, you might want to catch the full conversation — which also touches on regulation, talent in the industry, and crypto — below.

A lot of fintechs “have to fix their business models,” say VCs who invest in fintechs by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

PhonePe’s valuation has more than doubled to over $12 billion in a new funding round as the Indian fintech giant readies for life without parent firm Flipkart. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup said it has raised $350 million and anticipates raising up to another $650 million as part of the round in a remarkable feat at a time when fundraising activity has slowed down globally as investors become cautious.

General Atlantic led the first tranche of the investment. The company has not assigned a name to the funding round, but said it was valued at $12 billion pre-money. TechCrunch reported last month that PhonePe was finalizing a large funding round at $12 billion pre-money valuation.

$12 billion is a staggering valuation for PhonePe, which was valued at $5.5 billion in late 2020. PhonePe currently does less than $450 million in annual revenue. Publicly-traded rival Paytm, which expects to hit $1 billion in revenue in the financial year ending March 2023, currently has a market cap of $4.2 billion.

Walmart, a majority investor in PhonePe, is expected to participate in the current funding round, according to a source familiar with the matter.

PhonePe, to be sure, is a clear leader in the the mobile payments market on UPI, a network built by a coalition of retail banks in India. UPI has become the most popular way Indians transact online, and processes over 7 billion transactions a month. Seven-year-old PhonePe commands about 40% of all these transactions. The startup says it has over 400 million registered users and more than 35 million offline merchants rely on the platform.

A concern for PhonePe’s growth was Indian regulator enforcing a market cap check on each player, but the deadline for the new guidelines was extended last month and now won’t come into effect until 2025, giving PhonePe another two years of fast-growth.

“I would like to thank General Atlantic and all our existing and new investors for the trust they have placed in us. PhonePe is proud to help lead India’s country-wide digitization efforts and believes that this powerful public-private collaboration has made the Indian digital ecosystem a global exemplar. We are an Indian company, built by Indians, and our latest fundraise will help us further accelerate the Government of India’s vision of digital financial inclusion for all,” said Sameer Nigam, founder and chief executive of PhonePe, in a statement.

“We look forward to delivering the next phase of our growth by investing in new business verticals like Insurance, Wealth Management and Lending, while also facilitating the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India.’”

PhonePe was founded in 2015 and within a year was acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart. The two parted ways last month and now Flipkart no longer owns a stake in the payments firm. The separation will have some impact on Flipkart’s valuation. In July last year, Flipkart Group raised $3.6 billion at a valuation of $37.6 billion. Flipkart doesn’t plan to re-enter the mobile payments market, TechCrunch earlier reported.

PhonePe said it will deploy the new funds to make significant investments in infrastructure, including in the development of data centers and build more financial services. The company also plans to invest in new businesses, including Insurance, wealth management, and lending.

“Sameer, Rahul and the PhonePe management team have pursued a clear mission to drive payments digitalization and significantly broaden access to financial tools for the people of India. They remain focused on driving adoption of inclusive products developed on the open API based ‘India stack,’” said Shantanu Rastogi, Managing Director and Head of India at General Atlantic, in a statement.

“This vision is aligned with General Atlantic’s longstanding commitment to backing high-growth businesses focused on inclusion and empowerment. We are excited to partner with the PhonePe team to help enable the next generation of digital innovation in India.”

(More to follow)

India’s PhonePe tops $12 billion valuation in new funding by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Shein, the fast fashion behemoth that has swept across the world, is raising a significant down round as the startup world braces for a funding crunch. The e-commerce platform known for jaw-dropping outfit prices and savvy TikTok marketing is seeking $3 billion at a valuation of $64 billion, down from the $100 billion price tag in April, according to Financial Times.

Shein denies the accuracy of some of the information, a spokesperson for the firm told TechCrunch when asked to confirm details from the report.

One must wonder which part of the report got it wrong. To be fair, Shein’s plunging valuation is not an abnormality in today’s e-commerce world. Pinduoduo, the marketplace that has managed to threaten the dominance of Alibaba’s Taobao in China by offering attractive deals, has seen its market cap plunge to around $100 billion from a peak of $240 billion in February 2021.

Pinduoduo is now pinning its hope on its sister platform for overseas shoppers, Temu, which is gaining some ground in the U.S.

Sea, which operates the Southeast Asia-focused e-commerce giant Shopee, has lost over 80% of its market cap since November 2021. Shopee cut roughly 7,000 jobs within just six months to offset losses, Bloomberg reported in November.

Compared to other e-commerce counterparts, Shein’s drawdown doesn’t look too terrible.

Shein is still planning to forge ahead with its IPO, which could launch as early as this year, according to the FT report. There is a lot for Shein, which emerged from China’s reckless, cut-throat world of export ecommerce, to sort out before going public. The company has been preparing. For one, it has made its Singapore office the de facto holding company, at a time when China tightens up regulations around overseas listings and cross-border data transfers, and as U.S. regulators heighten scrutiny over China-related tech companies.

Shein has also significantly stepped up its ESG — environmental, social and governance — efforts. But it’s unclear how the firm can remake itself to be “socially responsible” without disrupting its business model, namely, fast fashion, which is fundamentally destructive to the environment. Multiple investors TechCrunch previously talked to also pointed to potential “accounting compliance” issues, as China’s clothing manufacturing industry is notorious for murky invoicing practices and tax evasion.

Shein valuation reportedly plummets by a third as it seeks $3B by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

The question of whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a fraud or is just too careless with his words took center stage in a San Francisco court room Wednesday. Under the microscope was Musk’s notorious 2018 tweet that stated funding was “secured” to take Tesla private at a potential value of$420 per share. In a class-action lawsuit that’s already two days underway, Tesla shareholders who traded the company’s stock in the days after Musk’s tweet are suing the executive for billions of dollars in damages.

The outcome of the trial will hinge on the language and intent of that tweet. The plaintiffs argue it led ordinary investors to lose money, and Musk’s lawyers argue the tweet was simultaneously true (he really did intend to take Tesla private) and a slip of the hand (“funding secured” was the wrong word choice).

The jury will need to decide if: 1) Musk knowingly tweeted false information to affect Tesla’s share price; 2) The tweets artificially inflated Tesla’s share price by playing up the status of funding for the deal; and 3) If so, by how much.

Glen Littleton, a Tesla investor and lead plaintiff on the case, said Wednesday he took Musk at his word and, fearing financial ruin, ended up liquidating somewhere between 90% to 95% of his positions.

“I couldn’t afford to stay in,” Littleton told jurors.

His lawyers argued he lost $3.5 million as a result.

Musk’s reputation at stake

If Musk loses the case, he’ll likely be forced to part with a good chunk of money. However, if the jury finds that Musk knowingly tweeted fraudulent information, the CEO’s already shaky reputation could be at risk.

Shareholders have lost confidence in the star executive ever since he bought Twitter and proceeded to scream even more loudly into the platform’s void. Some investors even say the Twitter dramas, which include Musk selling Tesla stock to pay for Twitter business, might be part of the reason the company’s stock price dropped 65% in 2022.

Musk’s lawyers seem to have cottoned on to this reputational damage. They bid to have the trial transferred to Texas, which has been Tesla’s headquarters since 2021, arguing that Musk couldn’t get a fair trial in San Francisco due to the jury pool’s probable biases against Musk after the executive took over Twitter and laid off more than 3,750 employees.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen rejected the bid, siding with the shareholder’s lawyers who basically said Musk made his bed and can now lie in it.

“Funding secured.”

In the 10-day period after the tweet (August 7 to 17), Tesla’s share price shifted about $14 billion.

A few days later, Musk backpedaled somewhat in a blog post that explained why he wanted to take Tesla private. In the post, Musk said that based on several meetings with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, he truly believed a deal was secured and all that was needed was to get the process moving — hence the ill-fated tweet.

Turns out funding was not secured, and in the days following the tweet, the Saudis backed out. Musk then accused the governor of the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund of throwing him “under the bus.” Meanwhile, that September, the Saudi fund did invest $1 billion in Lucid Motors to launch the Air.

The whole debacle resulted in an investigation from the Securities Exchange Commission. Musk and Tesla settled that case without admitting wrongdoing, and they were fined a collective $40 million. Musk was forced to step down as chair of Tesla’s board, and the executive agreed to be less hasty with any Tesla-related tweets that could affect the public markets. (Although he hasn’t stuck to that agreement.)

“False and misleading”

Last April, Judge Chen ruled that Musk’s tweets were “false and misleading” and that Musk “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.”

That could be good news for the plaintiffs as they try to convince the jury whether the statements affected Tesla’s share price, but this is a jury trial and therefore the outcome isn’t solely dependent on Chen. The jury will also have to determine if they think Musk acted knowingly and the amount of any damages.

Musk’s lawyers argued Wednesday that the executive sincerely intended to take Tesla private and that he made a “split-second decision” to tweet that he was considering doing so. He tweeted “funding secured” because he’d just read a news article revealing that Saudi Arabia was investing heavily in the company.

“He decided in that rushed moment, imperfect or not, that disclosure was a better course,” Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, told jurors in his opening argument in San Francisco federal court. “He didn’t want there to be a leak.”

Spiro said the messages on Twitter didn’t affect the market, and in fact, when details of the plan were revealed in a meeting following the tweet, Tesla’s stock increased.

Nicholas Porritt, the lawyer representing Tesla’s shareholders, said the tweet and other messages from Musk and Tesla were “lies” that caused ordinary investors to lose millions of dollars.

Musk stands to lose billions in trial over ‘funding secured’ tweet by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Here’s a fashion rental startup with a twist: London, UK-based Curated Loop — which soft-launched a high end fashion rental marketplace last week after bootstrapping to launch an MVP — is sourcing statement pieces from independent designers’ sample stock to style itself as an edgier alternative to more conventional rivals.

Its approach means items available for rent on its marketplace may be literal one-offs (samples), or come from an indie designer’s prior season’s collection (aka, dead stock) or otherwise ‘stand-out’ in the sense that you won’t be able to source these garments in high street stores — or even, the startup’s co-founders contend, on other fashion rental platforms. So the promise is access to unique high end designs.

The startup argues there’s a gap for a luxury fashion rental marketplace focused on emerging independent designers and the cutting edge looks they’re stitching — which, on its marketplace, translates into a selection of bold pieces (and suggested outfits) picked to catch the eye of its target style-seeking young urban demographic (see, for example, this leather-look corset top — paired in one of its styling shots with bold-printed baggy ‘boyfriend’ jeans: £46.60 to rent the look).

Curated Loop is calculating that its target users might be looking for a high end outfit for special events (parties, job interviews, ski holidays etc) but also as statement daywear (perhaps to spice up their Instagram feed) — or even for ‘date-wear’ (it’s working on a Valentine’s Day tie-up with a dating app).

Changing the economics of wearing a designer outfit opens up a whole new set of opportunities for dressing up, especially for budget-conscious younger shoppers who seem increasingly comfortable giving fashion rentals a whirl — fuelled by concern over the environmental and ethical costs of fast fashion.

The UK has seen a blossoming in fashion rental startups in recent years, with the likes of Hurr (founded 2017), Hirestreet (2018), My Wardrobe HQ (2019), By Rotation (2019) and Rotaro (2019) popping up to offer fashion-conscious consumers a more sustainable way to stay on trend by renting high end.

Some high street clothes retailers have also got into the rentals game. So there’s competition aplenty — and, for new founders seeking an ‘in’, that means they face the age-old challenge of standing out in a crowd.

Curated Loop’s co-founders, Anna Caldana and Rachel Mcluckie, bring a background in (and passion for) fashion to what they hope will be badged as a fresh approach to designer rentals. They’re drawing on their own industry contacts, plus years of scouting for fresh design talent by scouring the pages of fashion magazines, to amass a database of indie labels they want to bag for their curated marketplace. (The business model they’re starting with is a per transaction fee but they say they plan to develop the model as they grow.)

Mcluckie describes the look they’re going for with their garment picks as “eclectic, city, cool, definitely unique” — arguing: “It’s got an edge to it over our competitors.”

Existing (non-p2p) fashion rental platforms had failed to impress the two co-founders with a more conventional (and/or cautious) approach to the clothes they ranged for rent. “Both of us felt we would go onto rental sites and it was all quite similar — specific wedding events [etc]… it definitely has a kind of tone,” Mcluckie suggests. “And I think that doesn’t necessarily align with Anna and I, what we were after in the market.”

Feeling an itch for edgier stuff to rent, the pair got together to establish Curated Loop last year.

Mcluckie previously founded a subscription-based peer-to-peer fashion rental startup, at the start of 2019, with the idea of getting users renting out their own wardrobes (a la By Rotation and others). But her earlier startup had a focus on live events — which the pandemic quickly put paid to — hence she began casting around for other business ideas in fashion. Then, with her friend Caldana on board, the pair hit on offering a curated pick of indie designer garments and building a marketplace that aims to cater to the needs of up-and-coming designers — helping them build brand awareness while generating a passive income by renting out stock that might otherwise be sitting in a warehouse gathering dust. (Or, even worse, tossed into landfill.)

“We wanted to create a product that felt modern, inclusive and elevated in line with our target audience of Gen Z and millennials,” Caldana tells us. “That’s why it was really important for us to launch with a mobile (as well as desktop) platform. It’s very intuitive and we have plans to build out gamifications to keep our Gen Z’s engaged.”

As well as mining their contacts books and attending fashion shows to source new designer talent, Curated Loop is working on establishing an ongoing partnership with the arts-focused London’s Central Sant Martins University — so it’s positioning itself to spot (and support) emerging talent at the student designer stage.

“I’ve been in the industry for over ten years… Anna[‘s] worked with independent designers forever. And I think that is definitely our strength,” adds Mcluckie in a video call with TechCrunch to dig into their approach. “We have got an immediate network but we also have a kind of peripheral network of designers — we’ve been able to go to fashion weeks, we’ve got a nice connection with Central Sant Martins. It’s really sort of building out that network — and that network effect to grow the customer and designer base.”

As with other fashion rental startups Curated Loop hinges on leaning into circularity — as an opportunity to sell the user on a way to expand their wardrobe (more) sustainably — and without having to invest huge sums of money to buy new clothes. Per the website, the cost of a Curated Loop rental starts at a tenth of the (listed) RRP of each garment. A savvy bit of product marketing that packages the price as a bargain by default.

On the sustainability side, they argue their focus on designer samples and dead stock helps reduce textile waste — a high percentage of which they say comes from prototyping and sampling.

Still, fashion rentals aren’t guilt free; they do entail a lot more shipping and cleaning than a garment might otherwise get if it stayed with one careful owner — so there are environmental costs to this kind of fashion-driven consumption.

To help with that, another of Curated Loop’s partnership is with London-based eco laundry startup, Oxwash, which does dry cleaning without solvents and uses e-bikes and electric vehicles for pick-ups to minimize carbon emissions. But the pair say they hope to do more on the emissions shrinking/offsetting front as the business develops.

“We’re obviously not in the business of greenwashing and we understand that there are emissions associated with shipping — so it’s something we are really focused on,” says Mcluckie. “The beauty of also starting a company from afresh is you can put those circular practices and plans in to begin with.”

As noted above, Curated Loop’s target customer is urban and on the younger side (Alpha, Gen Z, Millennials etc) — so brands are chosen for their likely style appeal to this demographic. And while there is a limited number of labels on the platform at launch the co-founders tout a pipeline of designers they’re working to add as they seek to expand the collection and scale rentals. Asked what they’re aiming for, Mcluckie says they have a rough target of hitting at least a couple of thousand rentals per month by the end of their first year running.

The choice to offer a curated edit of brands and unique pieces is not only a way to appeal to a fashion-forward, self-brand-building youth demographic that wants to wear stuff that helps them stand out (not blend in), it’s also a conscious strategy to attract more indie designers into the marketplace — with the pair suggesting up-and-coming designers will feel more comfortable showcasing their designs in a carefully curated digital space where they’re not being ranged alongside lower end and/or more conventional styles that could pose a perception risk to the brands these indie fashion labels are also working hard to establish.

“When we started speaking to designers we [identified] certain issues — we had designers [tell us] ‘we’re not happy in the platform I am right now, on the rental side, because I don’t know that I align with the rest of the designers on the platform’,” explains Caldana. “So that was one of the reasons why we decided to do this curated selection of designers — and emerging, independent and sustainable. Because we wanted to have every designer on our platform happy with the aesthetic their designs were sitting next to.”

Garments available to rent on Curated Loop’s edited marketplace run the gamut from dresses and skirts to tops, jeans, jackets and suits — and also span a range of price-points (with rentals available from £200+ at the high end to just over a tenner at the bottom).

Some of the items available at launch include this Custom Tapestry corset (listed as RRP: £350; the rental price is from £35 for 4 days); this Downfilled Ski Jacket with Hood (from £53.90 for 4 days’ rent); these Screen Printed Jeans (£35.40 for 4 days); and this Alba Candy Silk Dress (£120 for 3 days).

Currently all the stock is what would (classically) be labelled as ‘womenswear’ — but the founders say they’ll expand to offer ‘menswear’ soon too.

While there’s no option at present for Curated Loop users to pay to buy an item they’ve rented (i.e. if they’re really fallen in love with a piece), the startup says it’s working on adding the option for a user to pay to permanently add a rental to their wardrobe at a discount on its RRP.

They also suggest they may expand the platform to allow peer-to-peer rentals in future — which would mean letting Curated Loop users rent out their wardrobes to each other (which could, in turn, drive purchases of rental items once that’s opened up as savvy users might seek to cash in on popular pieces by buying them to rent to their peers). So there are concentric loops that can be hooked onto to amplify this kind of circular commerce.

If Curated Loop adds p2p rentals it would replicate the core offering of some of their more style-eclectic rivals (such as By Rotation) — so the gaps between startups in this space look set to blend further (if not entirely blur).

Potential fluidity around functionality puts a big focus on community building — and on pulling in a user-base that’s really engaged with and excited by what the platform offers them. So being able to serve up unique styles and looks (vs more conventional rental platforms) may help Curated Loop win over style-savvy users and turn them into loyal followers. Just so long as these cool kids dig its designer picks. So that means a lot rests on the co-founders’ style edit if they’re going to hit the sweet spot where every returned garment is circled smoothly and swiftly back into a fresh rental.

To this end, they note they’re focused on producing lifestyle content as part of the community building piece — emphasizing that their marketplace isn’t just going to dryly range inventory but will seek to serve users with advice and inspiration for putting together unique outfits and looks, and even offer access to events and third party partnerships (so, again, it’s picking up the baton of the traditional fashion mag to wrap glossily around the commerce component and, er, make everything more sticky).

Curated Loop is consciously labelling itself as a “fashion-tech” company. The plan is to build the MVP into a more fully featured product by adding things like gamification to drive engagement. But they’re also keeping a weather eye on whatever “web 3” might mean for youth fashion — whether that’s NFTs or some other form of tokenization (potentially tied to live events), or virtual clothes for dressing up avatars, or even “metaverse fashion weeks” (which is apparently a thing some folks in the fashion industry are working on making happen). So they’re shooting for the startup to be trend-led on the tech side too.

“We’ve not even dipped our toes [in web 3] but we’ve been to a few events. A lot of our friends are in that world,” notes Mcluckie, saying this emergent tech concept is an area they’re curious about right now — without being sure exactly what it may mean for the future of fashion. “It’s a really interesting space and I know at the moment it’s kind of gimmicky… ” she continues, before scattering a few more caveats about spending personal time on such stuff.

“But we know it’s probably going to be the future,” finishes Caldana, adding a little Gen Z conviction to Mcluckie’s Millennial ‘reserved judgement’ on metaverse.

So while the pair are currently (and for the near term) working with a tech agency, which built the MVP to their bootstring budget, the plan for later on is to take the tech piece in-house and build an engineering team so they can develop proprietary IP and reactively adapt the platform’s capabilities to mesh with howsoever tech intersects with fashion and/or reshapes demand for humans being stylish in the future.

Before then, the order of the day is more prosaic: Scaling usage of the marketplace by tapping up and into more networks (of designers and users), and working to get the word out in other ways, including reaching out to select social media influencers to raise some buzz.

The co-founders will also be looking to raise a seed round later this year — they say they’re targeting ~£300k — so they’ll be taking some time for fundraising over the coming months. And if all goes to plan, they want to expand the service to other UK cities and also hope to launch into the European Union “soon”.

“We have a clear pipeline and roadmap for growth, and our seed investment will help us achieve this,” they suggest, adding: “We have a number of ongoing conversations with early stage investors as well as Angels, it’s obviously so important to find the right fit for the business. We had an offer from an oversees Investor pre-launch but knew it wasn’t the right step for our business at that moment. Through (a lot) of hard work and determination we self funded our MVP and now can’t wait to start scaling!”

Curated Loop is ranging indie designer picks for an edgier take on fashion rentals by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

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Helloooo, Crunchers! The heavy goods train of tech news keeps on rollin’ down (and sometimes off) the tracks.

Apropos tracks, we’ve been a little besotted with this absolutely magnificent music video of Ren this week. It’s full of surprises and powerful bits — give yourself a 9-minute break and give it a listen! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

More layoffs: Sequoia-backed GoMechanic is the latest to make sweeping layoffs after funding didn’t materialize in time, Manish reports. The India-based auto services company is cutting 70% of its workforce. But wait, there’s more: GoMechanic’s founders misstated financials to investors with GoMechanic co-founder Amit Bhasin saying the startup made “grave errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs, particularly in regard to financial reporting, which we deeply regret.”
Can your robot do this?: In Boston Dynamics’ latest Atlas video, we see its robot running, jumping and now grabbing and throwing things via the use of hands. Matt shares more.
If you’ve never seen a car that looks like its name, you have now: Romain has your look at Kate, a new French carmaker developing tiny cars for your everyday use, from driving to work to driving on the beach. They remind us of a really fast golf cart only cuter.

Startups and VC

In a press conference on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has arrested Anatoly Legkodymov, founder of crypto exchange Bitzlato, for allegedly processing over $700 million of illicit funds, Amanda reports. “Overnight, the Department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money-laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, and to arrest its founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.

There’s a bunch more stuff happening in the world of startups today:

Well oil’ll say: Kirsten reports that Shell snaps up EV charging operator Volta for $169 million.
It’s not like we could remember our passwords anyway: Open source password management company Bitwarden acquires Passwordless.dev to help companies authenticate users without passwords, Paul reports.
PayPal Ventures buys now, hopes it will pay back later: Buy now, pay later company Tabby raises $58 million at a $660 million valuation as PayPal Ventures deploys its first investment into the GCC, Tage reports.
BainFund: Kate reports that the P2P lending platform PeopleFund raises $20 millionin a Series C extension round led by Bain Capital.
Ta-daaa! Money for you: Amanda reports that Goldenset launches out of stealth to make equity investments in creators.

Dear Sophie: What are some fast options for hiring someone on an expiring grace period?

Dear Sophie,

I’m a co-founder of a very early-stage startup. My co-founder and I are considering bringing on a third co-founder, who was recently laid off. She is currently in the United States on an H-1B with a grace period that will expire soon.

What are the fastest, least risky immigration options that we should consider? What’s going on with potential increases to USCIS filing fees?

— Careful Co-founder

Three more from the TC+ team:

Losing the horn: VCs think majority of unicorns aren’t worth $1 billion anymore, by Becca.
Leaning into that midday energy: Noon Energy brings Mars tech down to Earth with carbon-oxygen battery system, Tim writes.
Let’s spreadsheet this out, shall we: Anna puts numbers on the global venture slowdown.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

The layoffs just keep coming in Tech World. The latest is Microsoft, which announced 10,000 job cuts, reports Paul. The company has already made some layoffs last year, but this latest one accounts for a sizable chunk of its workforce — 5%. CEO Satya Nadella echoed other tech companies making layoffs recently in saying that the company accelerated its growth as customers grew, but when that slowed down, Microsoft had to do the same.

Cybersecurity company Sophos is making a similar move, laying off 450 employees globally, or about 10% of its employees, Jagmeet reports.

Meanwhile, in happier news, Apple has a brand-new HomePod with better sound and “smarts,” Darrell writes. And now that you know this, Brian has some thoughts on the newly returned smart speaker.

Here’s five more for you:

Get the skinny on OpenAI: Connie’s conversation last week with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman continues to yield all sorts of juicy details, this time about the company’s deal with Microsoft. Altman confirmed that was not an exclusive pact, she writes.
This message brought to you by…: TikTok now has a “state-controlled media” label in 40 more countries to show “whose ‘editorial output or decision-making process’ is subject to influence by a government,” Sarah writes.
If you’re feeling Blue: Twitter now offers an annual Blue subscription for those hardcore users, Ivan reports.
A tribute: Brian gives a final salute to Google Stadia, which shut down today.
Another go at it: For the second time in six months, Mailchimp says it was hacked. Zack has more on what happened this time.

Daily Crunch: GoMechanic lays off 70% after investors discover ‘founders knowingly misstated facts’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

In a heartwarming callback to the absurdly low-stakes controversies of the Obama era, the State Department is making extremely small waves by officially retiring the old workhorse Times New Roman font from official communications. It will be succeeded by Calibri, a font best known now for being publicly retired in 2021.

Really though, there is no furore (let alone furor) about this, since if anyone cares enough about fonts to say anything, they probably are so tired of TNR by now that their only complaint would be “what took so long?” But it’s funny that it’s in the news at all.

The Washington Post learned of the change from a leaked cable sent by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken — not quite the operational security I’d hoped for from them, but we would have found out soon enough. The reason for the change is accessibility and readability: a sans serif font (that is, without the little bits on the ends of letters) is considered by many to be easier to read at smaller sizes on digital devices, especially for those with vision impairments.

It’s a laudable goal, even if it isn’t quite that simple: a more readable font is a good idea, but accessibility needs to be built into processes from the ground up, not as a layer on top. Still, small steps count too.

Funnily enough, the State Department is taking the same step Microsoft did way back in 2007, when it itself replaced Times New Roman with the then-new Calibri as the default font for documents. The reasoning was largely the same: serif was more readable and people weren’t printing as much.

But that was a long time ago, and Calibri is now on its way out for various reasons, perhaps for its distastefully attenuated terminators. It’s not like it’s going to be purged from the Earth or anything like that — “not the default” isn’t a death sentence — but it’s definitely a bit strange to pick it as your “new,” highly official font given the circumstances.

It’s understandable that the federal government would generally prefer a product that’s been proven over many years of use. I don’t really expect them to switch to Roboto, or Source Sans, or even my preferred font out of the Microsoft replacements, Bierstadt. Although this one based on gerrymandered districts might have been appropriate:

It’s just that there’s actually a font made for this purpose: Noto. The collaboration between mega-foundry Monotype and Google is a totally free sans-serif font that was built from the ground up to accommodate all languages, symbols, and ordinary typography needs. It’s great for any government application that might need to be printed in several languages, but even more so for the wide-ranging State Department. But perhaps they have their reasons for preferring a Microsoft default to a comparatively exotic Google typeface. “Keep It Simple, State.”

Design fluency is not really a federal strength, but they seem to be improving — better than many state governments, I must say, which often have agency and official pages that look straight out of 2007 themselves. In this case swapping to a more suitable font, even if it’s aged and uncool, is a good move and perhaps the trickle that precedes a flood of good, thoughtful design — of which accessibility is a part and a consequence, not just a component.

Font furore as State Dept retires Times New Roman for retiring Calibri by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Federal regulators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that three Amazon warehouse facilities had violated legislation designed to require employers to provide safe working environments. Investigations found that Amazon workers are at high risk for back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), especially in warehouse environments that prioritize speed over safety.

“While Amazon has developed impressive systems to make sure its customers’ orders are shipped efficiently and quickly, the company has failed to show the same level of commitment to protecting the safety and well-being of its workers,” said Doug Parker, an assistant secretary at OSHA.

Amazon must pay a $60,269 fine for the violations at warehouses in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois and New Windsor, New York. As part of the same investigation, OSHA found in December that six Amazon warehouse facilities had failed to record and report worker injuries and illnesses. There are three similar, ongoing investigations at Amazon facilities in Colorado, Idaho and New York.

OSHA’s findings show an ongoing pattern of employee injuries, including stuck-by injuries while handling objects over 50 pounds. An example report from July reads, “crushing/smashing; face; furniture (61 lbs).” Another reads, “strain/sprain; lower leg; fitness equipment (148 lbs.)” The Florida warehouse was also cited for being too hot, which can potentially cause heat-related illness.

Amazon has onsite clinics called Amcare for employees who may suffer injuries on the job, but OSHA claims that these facilities can be prohibitive to workers receiving adequate medical care. Amazon employees told investigators that the Amcare clinic in Deltona, Florida required injured workers to wait three weeks after an injury before they could be referred to a physician. OSHA also found that if an employee suffered head trauma and dizziness, they were not immediately referred to a physician.

A spokesperson from Amazon told TechCrunch that the company denies OSHA’s claims.

“We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement. “We’ve cooperated fully, and the government’s allegations don’t reflect the reality of safety at our sites. Over the last several months we’ve demonstrated the extent to which we work every day to mitigate risk and protect our people, and our publicly available data show we’ve reduced injury rates nearly 15% between 2019 and 2021.”

Amazon said that the federal government does not offer specific ergonomics guidance to employers, so the company has invested in engineering innovations that can reduce the need for workers to bend, twist and reach in ways that can cause injury. Warehouse workers also take part in stretching groups called “huddles.”

“The vast majority of our employees tell us they feel our workplace is safe,” Nantel said. “We look forward to sharing more during our appeal about the numerous safety innovations, process improvements, and investments we’re making to further reduce injuries. We know there will always be ways for us to improve even further, and we will — we’ll never stop working to be safer for our employees.”

Federal regulators have found trouble in Amazon’s warehouses for years, where workers typically work physically-demanding shifts of ten hours with minimal breaks. According to data from the Washington State Department of Labor, the rate of strains and sprains per 10,000 employees are four times higher at Amazon than they are at other warehouses. And in 2019, OSHA found the same issue with Amcare facilities that it’s reporting now: Amcare staff are treating employees onsite, rather than referring them to other doctors when necessary.

Amazon fined by regulators for unsafe warehouse work conditions by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch