Great businesses need more funding to go forward and innovate. Just when money is ready, any fast growing entrepreneurial venture firm is motivated to expand its market and develop its future products. Allbirds, a new San Francisco-based sneaker, is one of these companies.
In a recent Forbes article by Jeff Kaulin, Allbirds has raised a total new funding of 17.5 million dollars. This new capital infusion was led by Tiger Global Management, a New York-based firm and joined by other investors such as Elephant (US-based VC firm), Lerer Hippeau Ventures (NYC-based seed stage VC firm), and Maveron (California-based VC firm).
It was Series B funding round where investors infused money when the company is progressing as expected to raise additional capital.
R&D and international market
With this money, the founders Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger planned to use the raised capital for the researched and development on sustainable materials to support future products and international market expansion. Currently, Allbirds has a permanent location on the ground floor of its headquarter in San Francisco and Brown wanted to open more U.S. retail stores and New York is up later this month.
The founders
Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger met over birds and beers. Tim Brown is a retired professional soccer player who spent his twenties playing for New Zealand's National Team, going all the way to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
As an athlete, he was the right person to ask about shoes because companies practically provide it for free. But having those brightly colored, covered in logos and made of synthetics shoes made Brown wonder in finding shoes that were simple, beautiful and made from natural resources.
To satisfy his interest, he roamed around New Zealand to invent a sustainable and biodegradable shoe and after retiring from sports, he attended business school in London.
After his Kickstarter campaign succeeded beyond expectation, he teamed up with San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur Joey Zwillinger who is also a biotech engineer and renewable materials expert to start a career. Together, they launched Allbirds in 2016 with a guaranteed consumer-ready product that comes with a 30-day trial.
If customers end up not liking the products, the company will take them back with a full refund.
The products
Allbirds has 2 sets of products, the Wool Runners (released in March 2016) and Wool Loungers (released in April 2017), available in different colors. These products are made in simple design using merino wool that is ZQ-certified. ZQ-certified means that the material meets stringent standards for sustainable farming and animal welfare. In other words, no sheep were harmed in the process of making this footwear.
Indeed, Allbirds products were created with a vision to do thing differently. And not harming mother earth.
