• Czech supply chain management startup SupplyDo brings in EUR 400K from Nation 1.
• The startup covers all supply chain and fulfillment issues for a brand or eCommerce.
• The new investment will be used for scaling, launching an app, and adding a variety of new features.

This April, Zlín-based supply chain management facilitator SupplyDo raised a round of CZK 9.6M (EUR ~400K). The investment came from the well-known Czech VC fund Nation 1.

Supply Chain over Hockey

David Klímek started SupplyDo one year ago. Covering the startup and the founder, the media likes to put a heavy focus on Mr Klímek’s past as a pro ice hockey player (for the Canadian Edmonton Oilers, among other teams), only briefly touching upon the less ‘flashy’ part – the fact that during his last years in pro hockey, the athlete had been combining sports and a career in the supply chain and logistics department. Meanwhile, it is this experience that led Mr Klímek to realizing that a solution like SupplyDo was in demand.

He had worked in the supply chain industry for over seven years and seen how the supply chain world has changed since COVID-19 started. According to Klímek, the past two years have been overall particularly difficult: prices skyrocketing, energy, employee and materials shortages, etc. Brands were limited by their suppliers in terms of prices and lead times. Suppliers got limited by their own in-house productions, materials, price politics, and their human resource.

Working in this industry, the entrepreneur began to look for a way to change the supply chain ruts and make the whole process easier for brands, as well as eCommerces. ‘It just made sense to combine all my experience with the European network of suppliers and brands in order to make things easier for them and change the standard processes. Additionally, I was thinking about how to add advantages for eCommerces and their outsourcing fulfillments. SupplyDo is the connection between these two worlds – supply chain and fulfillment,’ Mr Klímek tells ITKeyMedia.

Custom-Built Supply Chains with an Extra Mile

SupplyDo is a one-stop shop for all the supply chain and beyond. It builds the supply chain according to the client’s product portfolio and needs, instead of letting suppliers fit clients into their capabilities. The services cover the whole process and optimize the cost, lead times, technologies and materials, save time and even help with the cash flow.

‘There are plenty of printers, manufacturers and fulfillment centers in Europe. The problem is not to find one or two. The problem is that you need a combination of more suppliers to finish your product line as a bundle (packaging, stickers, technical prints, marketing prints, shipping boxes, and distribution). Brands know how hard it is to deal with the supply chain processes and suppliers, and we know how to make things go smoothly. This is a brand new experience – both for our current clients and the future ones – on how things can go well in the supply chain,’ Mr Klímek explains.

Marek Moravec, managing partner at Nation 1, states that his fund supports making life easier for companies and individuals. ‘SupplyDo’s solution gives its clients a huge relief from many burdens – from packaging production to marketing materials to distribution,’ he adds.

As an extra mile, SupplyDo offers its clients offline marketing support (POS, billboards, marketing prints in general). Mr Klímek shares that the plan is to come up with a new marketing item each quarter, which will suggest ideas on how to ‘play’ with offline marketing items. For example, in Q1 2023 the company came up with a gift bag made of grass paper. This is SupplyDo’s way to underline a client brand’s uniqueness and eco-friendliness, as well as simply to ‘freshen up’ the regular paper bags.

Scaling Plans

In one year of its operations, the startup managed to grow from two employees (including the founder) to five in-house and thirteen remote employees. At the same time, the company’s turnover reached CZK 11M (EUR ~470K) per year, making SupplyDo profitable. With this in mind, it is somewhat unclear why the company would seek investment.

‘After several months of discussions with investors, I realized how important it is to scale the business quickly. For us, it is the fulfillment part for eCommerces and our new upcoming website app for eCommerces and fulfillment centers,’ Mr Klímek says without sharing too many details at this point.

Indeed, managing the supply chain and delivery can produce a lot of challenges for an aspiring brand or eCommerce. Since they are not directly related to the brand or product, they are outside the entrepreneur’s interest and can often be enough to discourage the entrepreneur completely or at least occupy a significant share of their time and attention. Luckily, there is an all-in-one-solution to take care of all those burdens.