Creative Force, providing an AI-powered content operations workflow for large e-commerce retailers and brands, secured $8.9 million in Series A funding, on a post-money valuation of $56 million, from Export and Investment Fund of Denmark and Hearst Ventures.
The Denmark-based company, founded in 2019, helps retailers and brands create content for marketing campaigns and online merchandising. Its platform enables production of the content at scale, increasing efficiency by up to 30% so that the company can focus on other things, Thomas Kragelund, co-founder and CEO of Creative Force, said in an email interview.
Kragelund went on to explain that unlike other companies that focus on single pain points, Creative Force was developed to be an end to end solution. It also works with enterprise-level companies where content creation has become too complex — think conducting multiple photo shoots, video production, booking models, editorial, post-productions and approvals — to handle with just project management software and spreadsheets.
“The need for content has exploded with social media and fast data connection speeds that enable more rich content,” Kragelund said. “Uniting creativity and operations together in one platform is an interesting intersection because creativity is about making something new that hasn’t been seen before, and operations is the ability to repeat a process over and over again.”The company focused initially on the fashion and apparel market. However, since its seed round in 2022, the company saw a 170% year over year growth in other verticals, including home improvement, furniture, jewelry and groceries. As such, Creative Force nearly doubled its development team and created a dedicated AI team, Kragelund said. In addition, Juliana Vail also recently joined the company to be managing director of the company’s AI incubator, dreem.ai.
The concept has caught on. In the past year, Creative Force has managed over 10 million digital creative assets, including video, copy and photos. It is working with brands, including Columbia Sportswear, OTTO, ALDO, David Yurman and Tommy Bahama.
The new investment brings its total funding to $17.9 million and will enable the company to continue integrating generative artificial intelligence into its platform, expand its Denmark headquarters and establish a new U.S. office in Boston.
In terms of technology development, Creative Force is investing in AI tools for 2D and 3D images and models, product images without needing another photoshoot and virtual models. Kragelund referred to another as a “co-pilot” tool, that for example, will write first drafts of product descriptions after which a human copywriter can quickly review, edit and finalize.“We believe AI will be a game-changer in terms of producing content at scale, and we are in a unique position to bring generative AI into e-commerce content production,” he added. “Heading into 2024, the primary objective of our sales and other go-to-market teams is to establish Creative Force as the leading content creation platform in the U.S., similar to what we’ve done in Europe. This funding round gives us the resources we need in order to do that successfully.”
Meanwhile, technology that moves with the way work flows is one of the reasons why Megumi Ikeda, managing director at Hearst Ventures, was interested in Creative Force. Ikeda, via email, said that e-commerce hasn’t typically been the beneficiary of that workflow innovation.
“The Creative Force platform caters to its customer’s daily work patterns,” Ikeda said. “Customers find it intuitive and easy to use. New users can use it right away. Key third-party software, such as Capture One and Adobe Photoshop are integrated into Creative Force to create a seamless end-to-end workflow tool. Adding new modules and adapting the flow of work and parties involved does not require weeks of waiting for software updates, unlike other competitors in the market.”
