Woven, the leading multi-unit business management software, announced it has raised $1.5M in seed funding led by Glow Brands. With this funding, Woven will further accelerate its efforts to streamline people management, operations and facility and asset management for franchisees and independent, multi-unit businesses, globally.
To date, Woven bootstrapped 100% growth, with all customer acquisition coming from word-of-mouth referrals and existing customer expansion, resulting in 98% customer retention over the past five years. The funds raised are earmarked almost entirely for sales and marketing program creation for revenue growth acceleration. Additionally, Woven has been implemented at more than 35% of all Planet Fitness clubs, 60% of all Buff City Soap locations, other brands such as Pet Supplies Plus and Great Clips, and across entire brand footprints, like Massage Heights and Zips Car Wash.
Multi-unit business management has been a widespread challenge within the franchise industry, resulting in low productivity, high employee turnover and disjointed systems. With Woven's platform, businesses can streamline back office work and manage people, locations and operations from a centralized site, enabling multi-unit operators to increase accountability, productivity and consistency. The most commonly adopted features include internal communications (e.g., team chat, private chat, company announcements), location audits, and employee shift scheduling and labor management.
"During my time consulting franchisors and franchisees for more than a decade, I noticed a recurring problem: numerous deficiencies in how technology was meeting the needs of the industry. Woven was launched to address those deficiencies, creating a single platform to replace siloed apps and a partnership model that helps organizations better utilize their tools," said Matt Goebel, CEO and founder of Woven. "Our mission to help multi-unit businesses scale with ease with our management tools has become a reality, thanks to this seed round."
In order to raise funding to expand Woven's impact, Goebel opted to pursue financing from a partner rather than an institutional market. One of Woven's biggest customers, Glow Brands, was chosen as a partner. Glow Brands received a powerful ROI of Woven's ability to streamline operations, communications and facility management, using it at 240 locations across the multiple brands they operate. By partnering with Glow Brands, Woven gained transparent insights into the pains and needs of its customers and could hold to its mission of being a partner to multi-unit and multi-brand businesses.
"Woven has been instrumental in transforming and growing our business," said John Piwetz, CFO and executive vice president of Glow Brands. "Thanks to Woven, Glow Brands has gained numerous efficiencies and improved managerial effectiveness. We have reallocated more than $1 million of managerial time previously spent on manual or redundant tasks to other growth-focused initiatives, creating an outsized return on our Woven investment. Partnering with a company that has so quickly provided this level of value to us - and many in the franchising world at large - was a no-brainer."
"Woven has been a great partner since day one, helping us improve our operational effectiveness," said Vince Cino, VP of Central Operations and Communications, ZIPS Car Wash. "The platform's ease of use, analytics, and depth and breadth of offerings has given us everything we need in one place to manage our day-to-day operations and prioritize the needs of our business," he added.
To learn more about Woven, please visit www.startwoven.com.
