Brightpearl secures £11 million in funding and appoints new Chairman

Brightpearl, a purpose-built retail ERP platform, today announces a £11 million growth round and the appointment of a new Chairman to help drive further expansion.

More than 1,000 brands rely on Brightpearl to transact more than £1.3 billion of trade across 26 countries. The company has seen a 77% increase in year-on-year new business growth and delivered 34% revenue growth in the last 12 months alone. Brightpearl was recently voted the top SaaS company to work for in Britain, beating companies such as Microsoft, Adobe and LinkedIn.

The latest growth round for the ambitious tech firm was led by Cipio Partners, who will join existing investors MMC Ventures and Notion Capital.

Brightpearl CEO, Derek O’Carroll said: “Our mission is to enable intelligent retail. We’ve experienced tremendous growth over the last year because of our ability to service the need from fast-growing brands for a solution that automates their operational processes and supports real-time decision making, which is absolutely vital in today’s culture of immediacy for retailers and wholesalers.

“It’s a real credit to the Brightpearl team and the support of our customers that we have secured investment from a leading European technology investment firm. We plan to invest these funds into expanding our service and introducing machine learning capabilities to give our customers even more value when making business decisions.”

With a view to scaling the business internationally, Brightpearl has also appointed Maurice Helfgott as Chairman, the former Marks & Spencer main board director, who has built a reputation for transforming the fortunes of fashion businesses, especially online. He is the founder of Amery Capital, an investment and advisory firm with a principal focus on retail and digital consumer businesses.

Speaking on his appointment as Chairman, Helfgott said: “After years of intensive high-quality tech development, Brightpearl have produced an excellent and capable platform, growing rapidly under impressive leadership. The next step is introducing real-time machine learning data into the platform, so our customers are able to make more informed decisions — that’s hugely valuable in the current retail climate.

“Retail and wholesale are in a stage of transformation and reinvention and there is a huge opportunity in this sector. I know from experience that automating the back office to work efficiently is now a major priority for merchants. Brightpearl has purpose built an ERP solution that’s designed specifically for retailers and wholesalers to take back control of their business and generate significant operational gains.”