Merchkit runs an AI-powered software platform designed to automate merchandising and catalog management tasks for retailers, marketplaces, and brands.
The Canadian company recently revealed a round of pre-seed funding to power its mission.
The $2 million investment, secured late last year, was spearheaded by San Francisco’s Afore Capital and included participation from Antler Canada as well as angels.
“This investment gives us fuel to continue on our mission to deliver a cutting edge product to retail and ecom teams who rely on Merchkit to simplify product information management,” chief executive officer Bijan Vaez stated.
Established in 2022, the Vancouver- and Toronto-based Merchkit provides a full suite of intelligent and automated products for merchandising.
For example, the platform’s AI can scan the web to locate and extract data from product pages, spec sheets, manuals, care guides, and pricing documents relevant to your catalog items. The tech can also automatically generate standardized data across a catalog.
“Our early customers have seen cost reductions of over 50% and in some scenarios a 90% efficiency improvement in their routine weekly merchandising tasks in handling their catalog data,” said Vaez, who cofounded the startup alongside Rob Hayes and Vasil Damyanov.
The technology aims to “automate grunt work, so your team can reinvest their time in the work that grows the business,” the company states online. The platform integrates with many major commerce brands, including Ottawa’s Shopify, WooCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
“Our work is solely focused on the frontier of building the next generation of AI tools that solve deep, impactful real-world challenges,” Vaez said.
The influx of capital means Merchkit is actively hiring, according to Vaez, who is known for cofounding Toronto’s EventMobi back in 2009. The serial entrepreneur also served as CTO for Toronto startup Browze.
“We’re more immediately looking for passionate, forward thinking founding engineers to work on Data Engineering or to lead our Applied AI efforts,” Vaez posted on LinkedIn.
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