Despite swelling regulatory pressures, the fashion sector’s emissions continue to climb.
Carbonfact, a carbon management software built for the apparel and footwear industry, believes it can help brands overcome this issue by offering them tools to measure, reduce and disclose their products’ emissions in accordance with upcoming regulations like the New York Fashion Act, the SEC Climate Disclosure Rule and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
More from Sourcing Journal
-
Salesforce Warns of AI Climate Impact, Calls for More Disclosure
-
SEC Issues Voluntary Stay as Litigation Over Climate Rules Pends
“After meeting with hundreds of textile brands and suppliers, we realized that collecting data and reporting on all product and supply-chain information is a complex task that requires more comprehensive data management than spreadsheets allow,” Marc Laurent, Carbonfact’s co-founder and CEO, said. “We believe that fashion brands should be able to measure and report on climate progress with limited manual work.”
In the 18 months since its seed funding, Carbonfact has onboarded more than 150 customers, including brands like Armedangels, New Balance and Carhartt—perhaps a direct result of the increasing regulatory pressure on the sector to measure and disclose emissions.
Now, Carbonfact announced it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round. European venture capital firm Alven led the round (as well as Carbonfact’s seed round in mid-2022) and was joined by global venture capital firm Headline, who is also joining the board. The round also saw a follow-on investment from Y Combinator, a technology startup accelerator whose 2021 batch the company was a part of.
“The fashion industry…emits some of the highest amounts of emissions for each dollar spent. Carbonfact is the only platform that offers a product deep enough to satisfy today’s increasingly complex supply chains,” Jonathan Userovici, general partner at Headline, said. “Carbonfact’s customers were the first ones to tell us about the incredible value the platform provides; some of them were even able to access more attractive lending rates and sustainability incentives by being able to show real sustainability efforts.”
Carbonfact said its priorities over the next year will be focused on helping retailers and manufacturers measure and build plans to reduce their emissions, as necessitated by pending parameters, and growing global onboarding teams. The Paris-based firm also recently launched a suite of modeling tools, allowing brands to understand how product design or supplier selection changes can impact carbon footprints before products are made.