COMPANY

Name: PRZM

Legal Name: UNDR, Inc.

Location: Los Angeles, California

Founded: January 2018

Founder(s): Kim Stiefel and Sarah Wissel

Website: https://www.przm.io/

Social Media: 52 followers on Instagram, 2029 followers on Twitter, 26 followers on Linkedin

Industry: Global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Industry

Size: $8T in 2014 (Source: McKinsey)

Future: $14T by 2025 (Source: McKinsey)

Introduction

Consumer tastes are evolving, and all CPG brands are struggling to identify and keep up with changing preferences. Sadly, it is seen that 72% of those who buy directly from a brand won’t execute a repeat purchase. Thus, these brands are all willing to invest in smart replenishment platforms, such as PRZM, to get the new-age consumer’s loyalty and attention.

With PRZM, brands can sell everyday essentials, such as detergent, oil, toilet paper, etc. to customers as soon as they run out of it. While every traditional subscription model tries to achieve this, it is never able to exactly forecast when the need will arise. Powered by predictive technology, the PRZM platform apprises brands of the consumer’s requirement more accurately. Thus, the brands improve their lifetime value by achieving customer continuity.

At the same time, in a Techstar Demo Day pitch, PRZM’s cofounder Sarah Wissel notes that e-commerce behemoths such as Amazon are gearing up to monopolize the CPG market. The multinational company will harness the consumer insights it has collected to build private-label products. This can spell doom for CPF brands, both big and small. Hence, PRZM was conceptualized to give these brands a fighting chance against the might of the Amazons of the world. 

The Product

PRZM’s continuity engine helps make it easier for customers to replenish their groceries from anywhere and anytime. This intelligent CRM for direct-to-consumer brands also helps brands better combat the crushing cost of retention, leading to a better buying and selling experience.

It offers AI-powered messaging along with a cartless, frictionless, and ubiquitous solution that ultimately results in higher repurchase rates. From a single screen, customers need to only swipe right to buy and swipe left to snooze and be reminded about it later.

According to Wissel, the startup’s revenues come from taking a cut out of every replenishment transaction that they process.

Origin and Founding Team

Kim Stiefel and Sarah Wissel, co-founders of PRZM, first worked together at a mobile app company Vytmn. Then, they quit their jobs and started UNDR, a solution that tried to help users automatically replenish undergarments when the need arises.

Wissel mentioned in the pitch that when they tried to better the offering of this fledgling startup, they recognized the need for predictive recommendation technology. The two entrepreneurs had already previously helped consumer brands with marketing, strategy, and growth. So, they quickly realized that CPG brands were also aching for a tool that will help them predict and deliver on the needs of their end-consumers. Thus, PRZM was born in January 2018.

Performance and Trends

In April 2018, PRZM secured an undisclosed amount from non-profit accelerator Grid 110. According to Crunchbase, it received a $120,000 convertible note from Techstars, in July 2018. And its latest seed round in November 2018 was led by Act One Ventures. The funding amount PRZM received from this round was $825,000.
In the three months preceding February 2019, PRZM launched a paid partnership campaign with five brands to power replenishment for their most popular products. At that point in time, Wissel claimed that there were already 200+ other such brands on the waitlist.