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Flagship, a Sydney-based visual merchandising analytics platform founded and led by Simon Molnar, is poised to make strides into the US after raising US$3.75 million ($6 million) and securing a major partnership with one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing performance apparel brands.
Molnar, younger brother to Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar, has hit the ground running with the business just a year after launching a fully developed solution in Australia and only months after landing in the US market.
The Flagship platform, which is designed to deliver “precision retail” to users, provides advanced analytics, insights and easy-to-implement solutions that solve some of retail’s most significant challenges.
Flagship, which has drawn the backing of some early investors in Afterpay, says it has rapidly established a strong presence in both Australia and the US where it has transformed the in-store performances for a diverse portfolio of clients.
“We’re incredibly excited to be partnered with amazing brands like Peter Alexander, R.M.Williams and Accent Group’s Stylerunner in Australia as well as Vuori, Mejuri and Madhappy in the US,” says Molnar, the CEO of Flagship.
“These flagship partnerships underscore the growing demand for our platform in the US market and validates our ability to deliver measurable results for high-growth retail brands globally.”
The company has achieved 357 per cent growth in the last 12 months, which has seen the startup expand its team to 12 employees across Australia and the US.
The company plans to boost its headcount by 35 per cent by the end of this year thanks to the $6 million seed funding round, which was led by venture capital firms Coreline and Veridical Ventures, and supported by Tidal Ventures and Macdoch Ventures.
The Flagship platform is designed to provide “unparalleled control, efficiency and insight to retail operations and reduce operational costs, increase sell-through and improve broader retail efficiencies for retailers of all sizes”.
The company notes that more than 70 per cent of purchasing decisions happen in-store at the moment of sale, which underscores the impact of visual merchandising and retail displays on consumer behaviour.
Flagship’s platform addresses this challenge by connecting store design with precise data analysis, creating digital twins of each store location that enable retailers to optimise product placement while providing automated revenue mapping.
Retailers benefit from enhanced precision, efficiency, and in-store performance, dramatically reducing costs and complexities associated with traditional visual merchandising processes.
"Visual merchandising has historically relied on manual processes and instinct," says Molnar, who started building the Flagship technology more than four years ago.
"Our platform brings data-driven decision making to store optimisation, allowing retailers to maximise revenue while maintaining the creative elements that define physical retail."
The latest capital raise, which follows a pre-seed round in 2023, is being used to support Flagship's expansion plans for the US.
While the company has not disclosed the identity of the performance apparel brand it has partnered with in the US, the pilot program could be a precursor to stellar growth for Flagship in the world’s largest single consumer market.
Among the early adopters of the Flagship platform is Australian sleepwear apparel chain Peter Alexander, which is owned by Premier Investments (ASX: PMV).
Flagship says Peter Alexander has long recognised the importance of money mapping, but the process was previously manual and time consuming.
"Previously, it took on average five hours per month for each store to individually attribute products to each fixture and correlate individual sales reports,” says Rebecca Withers, the visual merchandising brand manager at Peter Alexander.
“With Flagship, sales performance is now automatically processed in real time, eliminating the time spent to manually money map each store. That’s over 590 hours per month of the store team’s time saved."
Flagship is the first digital visual merchandising platform designed specifically for retailers that seamlessly integrates retail art with cutting-edge digital technology to enhance in-store performance and optimisation.
“As the retail landscape continues to evolve, Flagship remains dedicated to empowering physical stores to thrive alongside their digital counterparts, creating true connected commerce” says Molnar.
“We are confident in our ability to deliver measurable results for high-growth retail brands on a global scale.”
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