Christopher Heilmann and Esben Petersen, founders of Traede, wants to enable smaller brands within the danish fashion industry to compete against the larger players. The largest early stage venture fund in Denmark, SEED Capital recently invested millions in Traede, who are experiencing a monthly growth of 30%.
“The B2C fashion industry has been online for a long time, while the B2B segment is still tinkering with excel sheets, tiring manual processes and trade fairs. It is only natural that this is happening now” says Investment Manager at SEED Capital Alexander Viterbo-Horten.
Traede is an online software solution for optimization of B2B sales- and communication between producers and retailers. Deloitte’s fashion analysis from 2016 shows that for Danish fashion brands digitalization and export focus goes hand in hand with growth and sales. Traede enables their customers to scale without hiring more people, which makes small fashion brands capable of going global.
“Bestseller accounts for around 50% of the Danish fashion export. Our mission is to create more companies like Bestseller in Denmark. We want to help companies optimize their processes, increase their revenue and scale globally.” Says founder and CEO of Traede, Christopher Heilmann
Traede founded by two serial entrepreneurs
Esben Petersen and Christopher Heilmann have prior to Traede built several companies. By the age of 10, CTO Esben Petersen had coded his first HTML website. He later founded Dækskifte.dk, an online platform for selling low-priced tires. He sold that company in 2014. Christopher Heilmann was more interested in the fashion industry and launched his own clothing brand at the age of 16. The two entrepreneurs have now joined forces to launch Traede.
Traede has managed to raise DKK 3.5 million in funding from SEED Capital. Earlier, the company received just above DKK 3 million from Markedsmodningsfonden (The Market Development Fund). They are also a part of the Accelerator Program at Accelerace.