Cortina Raises $6 million Seed round with investments from Point72 Ventures and Alley Corp

NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Cortina, a revolutionary software solution that gives any retailer, from big box to mom-and-pop, the power to become a player in the fast-evolving marketplace revolution, today announced it has closed $6 million in Seed money, with Point72 Ventures leading. AlleyCorp, Primary VC, Blue Watch, and Lorimer also contributed.

"The big advantage of Cortina is that it is built by retailers, for retailers," said Co-Founder and CEO Keith George. "The Cortina team has a combined 50 years' experience in retail, and we applied that experience and expertise to creating Cortina so that it is plug-and-play. Once a retailer signs on, they can start building a marketplace, which means they can rapidly expand their inventory, and grow sales revenue, but slash costs related to unsold inventory and logistics."

Cortina is well-positioned to capitalize on changes that have upended retail in the past two years – changes that market-watchers forecast will quickly accelerate. As more customers look for convenient online shopping experiences that provide deep options in choice, sellers will have to adopt the marketplace model.

"All merchants, whether direct-to-consumer brands or celebrity and influencer curators, want to serve their consumers by providing a curated and seamless experience," said Tripp Shriner, Partner at Point72 Ventures. "Cortina helps ecommerce providers meet that goal by eliminating the technological and logistical complexity of selling multiple brand products on one storefront. By providing consumers with a wider set of options in their shopping experience, merchants are better able to attract, convert, and retain customers."

Kevin Ryan of AlleyCorp said, "We are excited about Cortina's ability to empower every ecommerce entrepreneur to create their own version of a digital marketplace within hours rather than having to go through the process of hiring a whole engineering team to build in-house."

"Our insights as retailers give us a huge advantage," said Brooke Cundiff, Co-Founder. "We know what retailers need. Our ease of use has quickly attracted clients across a range of businesses, from fashion / apparel brands to D2C consumer goods companies, to editorial platforms as well as content creators."

George says much of the investment will go towards growing the product and engineering teams.

"This guarantees we can serve our fast-expanding client base."

About Cortina:
Cortina's Marketplace platform enables brands and retailers to expand beyond their core business into new categories and products without taking on any inventory risk. The platform allows brands to sell other vendor's products directly on their own site, keeping their own brand experience while offering complementary products for their customers. Cortina supports direct connections to a limitless number of partners and is agnostic to all ecommerce and back-end technologies. Through these connection points, the platform imports and connects real time inventory, pricing, product descriptions and images to the customer's front end experience. This is completely controlled and managed by the customer. Upon a sale, the platform transmits the order back through the connection points to the brand and monitors the order from receipt to customer fulfillment.  

The Cortina team has extensive drop ship and retail experience from their time at Gap Inc, Saks, Gilt Groupe as well as the current CoEdition marketplace, which sells hundreds of brands through this proprietary system. As a result, the team also supports its customers with marketplace best practices, templates and knowledge sharing for vendor agreements, onboarding processes, billing, payments and other activities.

SOURCE Cortina