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Kiwi brand tracking startup Tracksuit has raised $7.5 million in its first capital raising, attracting investment from Australasian venture capital firm Blackbird.
Founded in 2021 by Matt Herbert and Connor Archbold in partnership with TRA Labs and Previously Unavailable, the company has expanded quickly into Australia, the US and theUK with companies like Sharesies, Simplicity and Allpress jumping on board to use its services.
Herbert said it was taking on the big market research companies and offering a service that was usually only available to bigger corporates but was pitching it at the small to medium-sized companies.
The company has around 25 staff, with the majority based in Auckland but would use the funding to scale up the business.
“It is being used to scale the growth and then to hire talent both in NZ, Australia, and the US markets that we are focused on.
“We started in New Zealand quite quickly we had brands like Allpress and a handful of others saying NZ is great but we have also got growing brands in these markets.
“Right from the start we said how do we make sure we build Tracksuit to scale globally. So those are the four [markets] that our main focus is on for this next 12 month period.”
Brand tracking start-up Tracksuit has raised $7.5 million.
The company is hiring and expanding at a time when many software-as-a-service businesses are looking to tighten their belts.
Herbert said up until this capital raising the founders had bootstrapped the business making it quite capital-efficient.
“I feel quite fortunate with the way that we have built Tracksuit being bootstrapped being quite capital-efficient to be in a position now that we can be hiring and we have been hiring great people.”
The company is now tracking 1300 brands across the world.
Herbert said its customers were companies looking to grow their brand and build a case for investment.
“We offer a common language for companies to measure, understand and communicate the value of their brand. What people measure gets managed and so what we are doing at Tracksuit is we have gone and reinvented the back end of how market research gets done and in a way that adds scale.”
Herbert said the company had thousands of surveys going out on a weekly basis for its customers focusing on the fundamentals of how to build a brand, how big the category was, how well-known the company was, and how it compared to competitors.
Internationally some companies have talked about a softening in marketing budgets and advertising spending as the global economy headed for a tougher patch.
But Herbert said there was still a good opportunity for brands to increase market share and awareness during periods like this.
“At Tracksuit we want to support that growth in the right areas but we also want to make sure the measurement and the tracking that Tracksuit is doing is also unlocking additional spend that can allow companies to use their marketing budget more effectively and efficiently.
“We think that mid-market consumer brand is really looking at that. And then also brands that may have done a piece of research once or twice a year - Tracksuit is how we keep this measurement online - while also making sure we can grow those businesses through the next couple of years.”
Herbert has a background with start-ups, helping Uber to establish its brand in its early days in New Zealand.
He said the name Tracksuit stemmed from its brand tracking purpose.
“Our approach is fun and it has been a name which we thought fit quite well in terms of tracking brands and in a way that we can live and breath that.”
And yes staff are allowed to wear their trackies to the office.
“There are tracksuits - we also gave out 100 for the first customers - and there was the Icehouse Ventures showcase at Spark Arena... Connor and my co-founder went up on stage in purple tracksuits. We took the team out wearing tracksuits when everyone else was wearing black tie.”
