Case Studies
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CASE STUDY
Amanda Curtis and her co-founder Gemma Sole live at the intersection of technology and fashion, disrupting a 100+ year process and business model of how things get made. Their company, Nineteenth Amendment, just released their latest product, N.A.bld (pronounced enabled), a production platform that helps brands produce sustainably on-demand with no minimums.
The genesis of Nineteenth Amendment and N.A.bld began with the co-founders’ realization that while the multibillion-dollar fashion industry innovated style, it lagged in technology. “We knew there was a need to provide on-demand, quick-turn production,” Amanda said. “We saw early on that the retail industry was headed in that direction. It was a big problem to tackle. But we knew if we didn’t do it, someone else would.” Amanda, Gemma, and their team got to work and built out an entire digital supply chain that goes from design through delivery. It’s a robust technology that, now built, is difficult to emulate. So to clarify: Amanda and Gemma discovered a massive market opportunity and built a killer technology.
SITUATION
The founders began to focus on scaling. But with scale comes new challenges, and Amanda searched for new investors and advisers to help navigate these challenges. That’s how, during an investor meetup in Boston, she met Kyle York and Joe Raczka of York IE.Even so, “Early on, people told us the fashion industry would never change,” Amanda said. Yet, four months after launch, Nineteenth Amendment announced a partnership with Macy’s — a first of its kind for the massive retail chain. “It was a giant indicator of where the industry and Nineteenth Amendment were headed,” Amanda said. With the success of their Macy’s partnership and fresh off the heels of a partnership with Bravo TV’s “Project Runway,” the founders began to focus on scaling. But with scale comes new challenges, and Amanda searched for new investors and advisers to help navigate these challenges. That’s how, during an investor meetup in Boston, she met Kyle York and Joe Raczka of York IE.
“We hit it off right away,” Amanda said. “Kyle and Joe had worked with companies that had experienced the pain point we were solving. Their expertise was also in SaaS, which has been incredibly valuable as we have undergone a rebranding to be more SaaS specific with the launch of N.A.bld.” In the beginning, Nineteenth Amendment was more of a marketplace that oversaw manufacturing for its brands through their custom-built production software. Now, with the launch of N.A.bld, they’ve broken apart their back-end software, which has allowed brands of all sizes to manage their own on-demand manufacturing. This has created a more self-serve plug and play for apparel brands — a Shopify for the supply chain.
CHALLENGE
Amanda and Gemma said their conversations, both in person and on the phone, with the York IE team have been instrumental in getting the company to this new milestone. Kyle and Joe have given their team strong, granular feedback on everything from pricing to partnerships to communicating with the end customer.“Kyle and Joe had worked with companies that had experienced the pain point we were solving. Their expertise was also in SaaS, which has been incredibly valuable as we have undergone a rebranding to be more SaaS specific with the launch of N.A.bld.”