{"id":18539,"date":"2024-02-01T08:38:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T08:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=18539"},"modified":"2024-02-01T08:38:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T08:38:00","slug":"the-latvian-on-demand-cpg-start-up-supplementing-the-creator-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=18539","title":{"rendered":"The Latvian on-demand CPG start-up supplementing the creator economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Supliful, a Latvian on-demand consumer packaged goods start-up, helps online entrepreneurs and influencers launch and manage their private-label cosmetics, dietary supplement, or packaged food business.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The vale of the creator economy has mushroomed in recent years, and it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goldmansachs.com\/intelligence\/pages\/the-creator-economy-could-approach-half-a-trillion-dollars-by-2027.html\">predicted<\/a> to further double in size to 480 billion US dollars by 2027. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this come creators and entrepreneurs looking for ways to monetise and grow their audience, while building lasting income streams that aren&#8217;t solely tied to impromptu sponsorships or thematically-irrelevant brand deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/made-in-emerging-europe\/plugging-lithuanias-tech-start-ups-into-a-global-network\/\">Plugging Lithuania\u2019s tech start-ups into a global network<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/news\/a-unique-expedition-to-save-the-baltic-sea\/\">A unique expedition to save the Baltic Sea<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/news\/estonia-tops-future-of-emerging-europe-sustainability-index-but-the-whole-region-must-do-more-to-address-demographic-decline\/\">Estonia tops Future of Emerging Europe Sustainability Index, but the whole region must make more of its opportunities<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>To that end, launching a business is an increasingly popular avenue, made widely accessible by white-label dropshipping companies. One of these is Riga-based <a href=\"https:\/\/supliful.com\/\">Supliful<\/a>, a supplement dropshipping firm,  one of whose users recently becoming the first to generate over one million US dollars in sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first of many, says co-founder and CEO Martins Lasmanis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAmong other things, our mission is to empower the launch and provide robust support for 100 seven-figure businesses by 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Founded in 2021, Supliful quickly expanded to the US market, opening a fulfillment centre in Denver, Colorado. The firm had a record 2023, more than quintupling revenue and growing the size of the team from 15 to 38 people, all while approaching profitability in the year&#8217;s closing months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Overcoming growing pains<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, Supliful&#8217;s rapid growth is posing scaling challenges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHigh demand is exceeding supply to the point where we decided to stop outbound marketing. A good problem to have, but one that demands a quick response. Moreover, this year, we&#8217;re aiming for an ambitious but achievable tenfold increase in our revenue. For this, we need funding,\u201d adds Lasmanis.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDespite the highs of 2023 and tireless outreach, we struggled to raise venture capital (VC) investment. It was a year of purse-tightening for VC funds and few would even consider anything beyond the traditional software business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s why, to ensure it could continue scaling while raising a series A funding round, Supliful sought out alternative financing in the form of a <a href=\"https:\/\/labsoflatvia.com\/en\/news\/how-supliful-went-for-alternative-financing-ceo-martins-lasmanis-onplans-to-scale-without-vc-money\">mezzanine loan<\/a>\u2014a hybrid debt\/equity finance instrument\u2014with equity fund FlyCap answering the call, providing 1.2 million US dollars in debt financing and up to two million US dollars available, if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, this isn&#8217;t necessarily a viable option for other start-ups seeking ways to weather the drought, says Lasmanis. \u201cDefinitely not pre-revenue ones, since you need to show that you can repay the loan.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Supliful aims to achieve its goal of tenfold increase in revenue by adding new verticals and expanding its production partner programme to build a network of CPG producers. It launched the programme in 2023 and has already welcomed their first three producers into the fold.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The start-up is following in the hoof-steps of Latvian unicorn Printful, and other successful print-on-demand (POD) start-ups such as Selfnamed, Print On Pack, and AM Craft that have put Latvia on the map as an unlikely but robust hub for POD innovation and development.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Unlike many news and information platforms,&nbsp;<em>Emerging Europe<\/em>&nbsp;is free to read, and always will be.&nbsp;There is no paywall here.&nbsp;We are independent,&nbsp;not affiliated with nor representing any political party or business&nbsp;organisation.&nbsp;We want the very best for emerging Europe, nothing more, nothing less. Your support will help us continue to spread the word about this amazing region.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You can contribute&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/emergingeurope.krtra.com\/t\/NlQnFuOA2C9c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>. Thank you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/emergingeurope.krtra.com\/t\/NlQnFuOA2C9c\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/emerging-europe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/copy-of-add-a-heading.png\" alt=\"emerging europe support independent journalism\" class=\"wp-image-50811\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color is-style-wide\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supliful, a Latvian on-demand consumer packaged goods start-up, helps online entrepreneurs and influencers launch and manage their private-label cosmetics, dietary supplement, or packaged food business. The<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[6793,6802,6799,6796,6615,6798,6801,6803,6794,6800,6795,6624,6621,6797,61],"class_list":["post-18539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-made-in-emerging-europe","tag-access-to-capital","tag-am-craft","tag-flycap","tag-funding","tag-latvia","tag-martins-lasmanis","tag-print-on-pack","tag-print-on-demand","tag-printful","tag-selfnamed","tag-start-up-funding","tag-start-ups","tag-startups","tag-supliful","tag-technology-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}