The fashion world is moving at a faster pace every year. Most retailers introduce new styles every season, and Shein, Fast fashion companies like H&M and Zara are constantly updating their collections. to adapt to the rapid demand for new styles; Brands and manufacturers are turning to technology to speed up their design process.
Raspberry AIFounded two years ago, the startup is a technology solution that helps designers accelerate product development by allowing them to visualize and iterate on their ideas almost instantly with its text-to-image platform.
Rasberry's founder Cheryl Liu, who focused on retail before working for Amazon and DoorDash, saw an opportunity to use next-generation AI for fashion design after image models like Open AI's. DALL-E versus Stability AIA stable spread was achieved by late 2022.
“For the first time in history, you can quickly create hundreds of designs in a way you've never done before,” Liu told TechCrunch. Before the next generation of AI; She explained that designers would often have to order physical samples to visualize their ideas, which would take weeks.
Another option is older computer-aided design tools such as Brozwear and Adobe's Photoshop.
But with Raspberry designers, they can turn their sketches into photo-realistic images, as they appear on the brand's website. According to Liu, these images help brands decide if they want to produce the product.
“The same foundation can be found in different materials and prints,” she says. “No company would order 50 different samples of the same product over and over again, but now you can see 50 different iterations of the same design.”
The product quickly became popular among brands. Today, Raspberry is the sports brand Under Armour; Groupo Teddy Italian manufacturer Groupo Teddy; We count 70 clients, including luxury designer MCM Worldwide, in 39 countries.
Because of such rapid growth, Raspberry is currently raising Series A investors Greycroft, led by Andreessen Horowitz. It raised $24 million Series A with participation from Correlation Ventures and MVP Ventures. The funding comes about 10 months after the startup's $4.5 million round.
Andreessen Horowitz is interested in investing in an AI company that can speed up the fashion production process, said Bryan Kim, a partner at the firm. “We met with several companies and were excited about Cheryl as a founder and her approach to building a company.”
Of course, Raspberry has “very large and important customers,” Kim added.
Raspberry is Midjourney; Although Liu acknowledged that it is competing with other AI rendering engines such as DALL-E and Adobe Firefly, A key reason professional designers choose her company's products is her ability to understand and accurately interpret industry-specific terminology.
She gave an example of the word “fuzzy sweater”. She explained: “There's a lot of (design-specific) terminology behind this sweater that a traveler doesn't know about.”
A design-specific feature provided by Raspberry is the ability to create images from sketches.
Raspberry is engineering; Hire in-house sales and marketing professionals. The funding will be used to expand into furniture and cosmetic product design.