Retail and consumer goods businesses have to make thousands of complex operational decisions every day: how much of an item do you need to reorder, which flagship store’s stock do you need to replenish, how does the quantity of an item on the market impact pricing. These decisions impact retailer’s sustainability goals, customer satisfaction, and ultimately its bottom line. Yet, professionals in this industry still rely on spreadsheets and legacy systems to make these important decisions, both of which are no longer fit for purpose.
Long-time employees in the S&OP and supply chain industry, Adil Bouhdadi and Harry Cheslaw have lived and breathed this issue. Fed-up with the status quo, they developed an in-house solution to ease the pain of legacy operational decision-making.
We are excited to back them as they build Autone, a modular data platform that senses the current state of a business, predicts what is likely to happen and why, and then allows retailers to take action on reorders, replenishment, pricing, and buying analytics. Aiming to become the decision OS for retailers and driven by their motto ‘Process over Product,’ the Autone team focuses on the processes to achieve a result, with the technology being a medium to facilitate this.
Co-founder Adil Bouhdadi emphasizes: “12 months ago, Autone really was just an idea. Slack transformed business communication and Figma democratized product design, but what about Retail? We combined technology with our business expertise to bring a better user experience and enable operational decisions at scale.”
Technical co-founder Harry Cheslaw adds: “After spending my career in retail, it became increasingly clear that despite the world and technology changing dramatically, decision making had not be re-imagined for a long time. Excel and manual processes were still at the heart of the Industry’s core operations. At Autone, we aim to empower our users to make faster and better decisions across their core operations – focusing on growth and creativity not number crunching.”
On why we invested, our Partner Tom Wilson comments:
“Autone provides vital insights to help retailers not only navigate the current supply chain crunch but supercharge their operations and thrive in an increasingly competitive retail market. Adil and Harry’s experiences in S&OP and Supply Chain equipped them with an in-depth understanding of the industry’s status quo and fueled their desire to build a user-friendly solution that truly serves the needs of modern retailers.”
We are excited to co-lead Autone’s seed round alongside Speedinvest, with participation from angels Jay Jopling (founder of White Cube) and Thomas Rebaud (Co-founder & CEO at Meero).
With the fresh funding, Autones plans to supercharge their business acceleration, specifically expanding the core tech team, customer success, and marketing in line with their go-to-market strategy.
For more information, visit autone.io.