Countdown to Shoptalk 2019: Startup Pitch Competition Participant Profile, Part 6 — Cymbio and Spruce Labs
Key Points
The Coresight Research team will attend and participate in Shoptalk 2019 March 3-6 in Las Vegas. The event brings together more than 8,000 attendees and more than 300 speakers to discuss rapid evolution of how consumers discover, shop and buy.
On March 3, Coresight Research CEO and Founder Deborah Weinswig will emcee a startup pitch competition featuring 15 early-stage technology companies. Judges will select two winners for a $25,000 prize.
Participating startups all have:
- $3 million or less in funding.
- Four years or less since founding.
- Scalable and innovative solutions for physical retail, omnichannel and e-commerce.
- Business-to-business (B2B) solutions.
Below, we look at two of the companies that will compete: Cymbio and Spruce Labs.
Cymbio at a Glance
Cymbio simplifies processes between brands and retail partners by providing a single platform to manage wholesale and direct-to-consumer (D2C) operations, enabling brands, retailers and vendors to seamlessly work together, eliminating painful, time consuming and expensive integrations and process changes.
It automates the process of moving product information from brands to fully styled retail product pages, and facilitates other data sharing, including inventory management, order routing and billing. The solution also facilitates automated drop-shipping, reorders, in-store drop ship and buy-online, pickup in-store (BOPIS).
What Problem Does Cymbio Solve?
Brands and retailers work with different back-end systems and data structures, which makes it difficult to share data and communicate efficiently in real-time, often resulting in lost sales and reluctance to pursue new opportunities. By streamlining information between trading partners, Cymbio enables brands and retailers to react more quickly, save time through efficiently sharing information and better leverage existing inventory.
Headquarters
Tel Aviv.
Funding Stage
—
Business Model
Cymbio is an SaaS platform that can be accessed from web and mobile devices. Cymbio operates on a performance-based model, with customizations available.
Management Team
CTO, Gilad Zirkel, has launched several successful startups.
COO, Mor Lavi, has launched multiple successful startups.
CEO, Roy Avidor, has experience in scaling retail, wholesale and distribution businesses.
Company Outlook
Cymbio aims to be the integration-free platform that, with a few clicks, enables businesses to start working together in a fully automated way.
Spruce Labs at a Glance
Spruce Labs offers a product called Sprucebot, which the company calls a “guest experience bot” that provides personalized experiences in retail stores. Sprucebot is a hardware and software-based solution that offers a suite of conversation commerce, automation and clienteling solutions. The Sprucebot plugs into the store’s Internet connection, enabling the platform to interact with shoppers over WiFi and SMS. Shoppers can receive proximity-based promotions, SMS reminders on discounts and schedule appointments. The mobile-first platform also can manage and create unique shopper profiles, so that store employees receive insights into who shoppers are as they enter the store and what they might want.
What Problem Is the Company Solving?
As retail sales continue to shift online, there is increasing pressure for brick-and-mortar retailers to leverage their physical presence to better compete against e-commerce disruption. This makes the role of the store employee even more important: Today’s informed shoppers expect excellent customer service, but employees in the stores have little information on specific shoppers, so are at a disadvantage in many ways to the online experience.
Headquarters
Denver, Colorado.
Funding Stage
—
Business Model
Spruce Labs’ flagship product, the Spruce GX Platform, charges clients based on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. There are a-la-cart monthly fee options, as well as yearly and multi-year licensing for bundles of features.
Management Team
Taylor Romero, Founder and CEO, has experience building website and mobile apps, as well as opening a menswear boutique and barbershop.
Mike Hrabe, COO, was Head of Sales and Co-Founder of Quantum Software, which he helped take from its first customer to its sale.
Company Outlook
Spruce Labs is looking for one or two more paid pilots with some strategic retail partners starting Q3 2019.