Brightpearl, the retail management software firm that is one of the stars of Bristol’s tech sector, has completed its latest funding round for further growth and appointed a high-profile chairman.
The firm, which launched 11 years ago in Bristol’s highly successful SETsquared innovation incubator, has received $15m (£11.4m), which it will use to introduce machine learning capabilities as well as fuelling further growth. 
The latest round was led by Cipio Partners, who will join existing investors MMC Ventures and Notion Capital.
At the same time former Marks & Spencer main board director Maurice Helfgott joins the firm, the world’s largest purpose-built retail ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform, as chairman.
He has built a reputation for transforming the fortunes of fashion businesses, especially online. He is the founder of Amery Capital, an investment and advisory firm with a principal focus on retail and digital consumer businesses.
More than 1,000 brands rely on Brightpearl to transact more than $1.8bn of trade across 26 countries. The company, which also has offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, has enjoyed a 77% increase in year-on-year new business growth and delivered 34% revenue growth in the last 12 months alone.
Brightpearl was recently voted the top Saas (software as a service) company to work for in Britain, beating companies such as Microsoft, Adobe and LinkedIn.
Brightpearl CEO Derek O’Carroll, pictured, said: “Our mission is to enable intelligent retail. We’ve experienced tremendous growth over the last year because of our ability to service the need from fast-growing brands for a solution that automates their operational processes and supports real-time decision making, which is absolutely vital in today’s culture of immediacy for retailers and wholesalers.
“It’s a real credit to the Brightpearl team and the support of our customers that we have secured investment from a leading European technology investment firm. We plan to invest these funds into expanding our service and introducing machine learning capabilities to give our customers even more value when making business decisions.”
Cipio Partner managing partner Roland Dennert added: “A big reason why Brightpearl’s retail ERP platform is catching on fast is that it provides multichannel retailers with a step-change improvement in ERP implementation time while being on feature parity or better for the targeted market than much more complex ERP solutions.”
Maurice Helfgott is the founder of Amery Capital, an investment and advisory firm with a principal focus on retail and digital consumer businesses.
As well as supporting Amery’s portfolio of companies including Oliver Sweeney, Goat, and Long Tall Sally, he is the senior independent director of Moss Bros Group and non-executive director at luxury street style brand END.Clothing. With 30 years of retail operations and industry expertise, he now makes the unique move to the technology sector by joining Brightpearl, with a focus on product innovation, building consumer and brand loyalty for its clients, and strategic operational growth.
He said: “After years of intensive high-quality tech development, Brightpearl has produced an excellent and capable platform, growing rapidly under impressive leadership. The next step is introducing real-time machine learning data into the platform, so our customers are able to make more informed decisions — that’s hugely valuable in the current retail climate.
“Retail and wholesale are in a stage of transformation and reinvention and there is a huge opportunity in this sector. I know from experience that automating the back office to work efficiently is now a major priority for merchants. Brightpearl has purpose-built an ERP solution that’s designed specifically for retailers and wholesalers to take back control of their business and generate significant operational gains.
“I’ve always taken good note of the maxim ‘armchair generals study strategy, professionals study logistics’. Product and marketing capability are vital to building a successful brand but efficient and effective back office capabilities are essential to building and scaling a successful business. Quality back office and ERP solutions are indispensable, especially in an increasingly fast, digital, complex operating environment. I’m really looking forward to working with Brightpearl’s customers, its stakeholders, board, and management team as we continue to develop and deploy our proven platform and accelerate Brightpearl’s international expansion, particularly in the US.”
Derek O’Carroll added: “We’re delighted to have Maurice join us. Brightpearl will benefit from his broad strategic and operational experience across large and smaller retail brands with international pedigree. This will prove vital as we accelerate our growth efforts and his wealth of retail experience means that we’ll be able to get even closer to our customers as we continue to develop our dedicated retail ERP platform to serve the operational needs of retailers and wholesalers.”
