Brothers Liam, 23, and Travis Gelada, 20, were Shopify sellers before deciding to tackle the more technical side of e-commerce.
Together, they ran a streetwear store without the high prices shoppers often see on the resale market, especially for sneakers.
As businesses have grown, their technology stacks have become increasingly complex. The brothers felt they had outgrown what Shopify and other e-commerce platforms were offering. They found that running a modern e-commerce business requires the integration of many different software, which often do not share data with each other, making management and decision-making difficult. I did.
They eventually sold their streetwear business in 2017, but the experience inspired what became Krepling, a no-code channel management platform they launched in 2020.
Krepling announced today that it has raised a $3.3 million seed round led by Bull City Venture Partners, with contributions from Launch, Brickyard, Front Porch Ventures, 11 Tribes Ventures, Colabora Ventures, and Broadshade Investments. Krepling previously participated in the Launch Accelerator program run by angel investor Jason Calacanis.
Krepling plans to use the new funding to expand its workforce, with the goal of doubling its team to 10 people this year.
The company targets sellers that are considered mid-market or large enterprises with annual GMV in the range of $5 million to $200 million and do not have large engineering staffs. Some businesses use other platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, while others are using Krepling to grow from scratch.
Liam Gelada, co-founder and CEO of Krepling, says their research shows that e-commerce sellers are “building their own structure for what a modern technology stack should look like.” It turned out that there was only one.
“We find that merchants are commonly extending their e-commerce stack to optimize the cost of reaching different consumers across different channels: SMS, email, social, Sometimes it's automated marketing, sometimes it's improving overall conversions,” he said.
“The problem we found with these merchants was that the current world of e-commerce enablement at the time simply wasn't set up or ready to give these merchants this much flexibility. That means there wasn't.”
Krepling's solutions are designed to help merchants by bringing all their data and operations into one place for easier management. There is a flat monthly fee, and once merchants reach a certain number of workflows, they can upgrade to a more premium plan.
“Whether a merchant wants to use 1,000 workflows or two workflows, we have the infrastructure in place to enable them to do that.If a merchant wants to deploy 1,000 stores. But even if you want to open one store, there are ways to do it,” Gerada said. He said. “We're kind of taking the AWS approach to e-commerce in terms of pricing.”
Take a look at the 13-slide pitch deck Krepling used to raise its seed round.
