Bamboo Rose Acquires Backbone PLM to Digitize the PLM Design Process

In case you haven’t heard the news, Backbone PLM has been acquired by Bamboo Rose! We’re so excited to begin this next step in providing a singular platform that empowers brands to innovate design, and develop products at digital speed, and we can’t think of a better partner in Bamboo Rose as we move forward. Let the new adventure begin!  

“The Bamboo Rose team is on a mission to tame the concept-to-launch PLM workflow. Backbone PLM fits really well into that model, delivering solutions for front-end design that complement the strengths of Bamboo Rose. Together we will offer the most comprehensive PLM solution in the market.” — Jeff Fedor, Backbone PLM

The Backbone Journey

When Backbone launched in 2014, founders Andrew and Matthew Klein had a clear vision to create a modern PLM made to meet the needs of emerging DTC brands. From the start, Backbone was designed to be cloud-based, easy to use, and offer a beautiful UI that fashion designers would love using. 

Most of all, Backbone had to set designers free from cumbersome administrative tasks and give them what they need and want most: more time to be creative. Today, our product development platform is still guided by these founding principles; to enable the world’s direct-to-consumer economy, empowering brands to make products faster, smarter, and at scale. 

The next few years of Backbone PLM brought wins, challenges, and market uncertainty (raising Series A round, growing our client base, hundreds of feature releases, the COVID-19 pandemic, rapidly changing customer demands, and supply chain uncertainties). A wild ride during truly unprecedented times, to say the least. 

In the last few months, conversations took place with an enterprise supply chain platform you’re likely familiar with; Bamboo Rose. We decided that bringing our organizations together would be an exciting and market-dominating venture to create a truly comprehensive PLM solution built for digital speed.

Enter Bamboo Rose

Bamboo Rose is the leading collaborative product development, sourcing & supply chain platform for retailers and consumer brands; helping companies bring great products to market faster, more efficiently, and at higher margins. The platform features a suite of patented supply chain solutions, including Bamboo Rose B2B Marketplace, product lifecycle management, sourcing, purchase order management, global trade management, and financing, each one supported by intelligent engines for optimization, costing, and scheduling across the platform.

While the acquisition brings change to Backbone’s trajectory, our platform is now bolstered by the impressive talent and technology of Bamboo Rose. The combination of the two will catapult creativity and boost productivity with design and sourcing technology that helps retailers get products to market even faster. In short, this acquisition is a win not only for our customers, but for our investors and employees alike.

“Truly serving the myriad of needs for product design and development at enterprise scale is challenging stuff. Backbone’s proven success of enabling the designer’s impact to that journey without sacrificing design at the altar of business process improvement will be a force multiplier when combined with Bamboo Rose’s existing market-dominating supplier collaboration and technical design efficiency gains.” — Matt Stevens, Bamboo Rose

Thank You

We are eternally grateful for the support of some incredible investors and team members along the way, without you we would have never made it here. Foundry Group, Signal Peak Ventures, Spider Capital, Matthew Klein, and Andrew Klein, thank you for your support, knowledge, and guidance in creating and running Backbone PLM. 

A huge thank you to the Backbone PLM team: the talent we’ve been so lucky to leverage in building our platform. The grit, determination, and agility shown by our team throughout the ups and downs that come with building a business has been instrumental in our success thus far. We’re so pleased to be bringing that talent to the newly combined company, and look forward to seeing the Backbone team grow with Bamboo Rose. 

We’d also like to thank our incredible customers, especially those who have been with us from the beginning. Your patience, feedback, and trust in building the Backbone platform has been invaluable to us on this journey, and we are so excited to bring all of you even more functionality and value as we join forces and scale with Bamboo Rose!

Meet With Our New Team at Shoptalk!

To learn more about the news, you can read the full press release below, or visit with our team at Shoptalk, March 26-29th. Join us, along with thousands of like-minded retailers, to discuss the future of our industry, and what this new partnership will bring.