Business management systems giant Sage has taken a minority investment in fast-growing Bristol-based retail management software firm Brightpearl as part of a £25m fundraising round aimed at triggering further international expansion.
Sage, which will have a seat on Brightpearl’s board under the deal, said the move would help make the firm a major player in the global digital retailer sector. 
Sage is investing around £17m out of a total of £25m raised by Brightpearl in the Series C round, with existing shareholders including Cipio Partners, Notion Capital and Verdane investing the further £8m.
Sage said teaming up with Brightpearl, which launched 13 years ago in Bristol’s highly successful SETsquared innovation incubator, would allow it to help retail and e-commerce customers take advantage of best-of-breed cloud finance and retail management solutions, supporting them on their digital journey.
Brightpearl, which has its US headquarters in Austin, Texas, helps 1,000 retail customers in 26 countries to streamline and automate their retail operations across order management, CRM, fulfilment, retail accounting inventory, and warehouse management as they scale and grow. 
The firm manages more than 10m transactions and $3bn of business a year.
The company, which has partnerships with organisations like Shopify, eBay and Amazon, has seen the number of online firms joining its platform grow by 75% in the last quarter of 2020.
Brightpearl CEO Derek O’Carroll, pictured, said: “We are delighted to build this new relationship with Sage to further support our retail customers and accelerate the strong presence that Sage and Brightpearl have in the UK and US.
“Brightpearl’s solution brings significant benefits by automating retail processes so global merchants can save time and deliver outstanding and rapid end-to-end customer experiences. This investment will allow us to expand the platform and provide even better service, increase our product innovation and our fabulous team globally.”
Sage said the partnership with Brightpearl was consistent with its broader strategy to invest in complementary high-growth cloud-based software applications.
Sage chief operations officer Lee Perkins said: “As retail businesses from across the globe recover from the impact of Covid-19, trading online has gone from being a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’ for retailers.
“Digitising back office operations is a critical step towards transitioning to online commerce – and through investing in high growth, cloud solutions like Brightpearl, we are committed to supporting our customers to not only make that switch quickly and easily, but to also grow and compete”.
