Tidal Ventures has contributed to a $6 million seed-plus round for Sydney-founded retail artificial intelligence (AI) technology start-up Flagship.
The funding round was jointly led by San Francisco and Tokyo firm Coreline Ventures and Los Angeles-based business-to-business (B2B) software-focused Veridical Ventures. Sydney firm Macdoch Ventures also contributed to the round.
The new funding will enable Flagship founder Simon Molnar – younger brother of Afterpay founder Nick Molnar − to relocate to Los Angeles where he plans to target major retailers such as Walmart and Target.
Flagship entered the US market six months ago and now plans step up its expansion plans there.
Tidal Ventures led a $2 million seed round for Flagship in early 2024. Other investors in that round were Nick Molnar, non-executive chair of the National Online Retailers Association Paul Greenberg, Superhero founder Wayne Baskin and NRL players Luke Brooks and Tim Mannah.
Flagship’s software enables a retail chain to pull together its entire visual merchandising processes on a single digital platform, saving administration time and building scale. The technology also helps chains plan at scale on statistical feedback, in clothing stores this includes monitoring earnings rack by rack.
The idea for Flagship came to Molnar while he was working at Afterpay. He realised visual marketing technology used in online sales channels was way ahead of that used for bricks and mortar stores but could be adapted to improve efficiency in the physical stores.
Image: Flagship founder Simon Molnar outside a store of one of the company’s customers, R.M. Williams.