User:Memoysauce/sandbox

Introduction
Nextail Labs, Inc., a company incorporated and registered in Delaware, USA and headquartered in Madrid, Spain that provides retail technology solutions through a SaaS model. It was founded in 2014 by Joaquín Villalba, Carlos Miragall, and Javier Lafuente (Decide Soluciones) as an evolution of mStore Operations, which was a cloud-based business app designed to support the in-store operations of fashion retail companies.

Nextail software applies technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics (particularly prescriptive analytics) to retail inventory buying, allocation, replenishment and rebalancing of stock through store transfers. The software collects retailer data to calculate demand forecasts.

History & Founders
Two of the founders, Joaquín Villaba and Carlos Miragall, met while studying at the School of Industrial Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In their final year of study, Villalba and Miragall were awarded grants from Georgia Tech to complete their final year of study in Industrial Engineering.

After completing their studies, Villaba went on to continue a career in operations at Kuehne + Nagel, followed by the completion of his MBA at INSEAD. He later joined the Inditex Group through the group’s executive program. He oversaw over 1,000 retail stores with more than $10 billion in annual sales. Miragall also worked in operations for Whirlpool, and later received an MBA from London Business School. He then joined the consulting firm AT Kearney where he was Senior Manager, working on strategic and operational projects across several industries.

Early years
At the end of 2013, Villalba started mStore Operations, later to become Nextail, whose objective was to improve stock management and rid it of traditional methods such as Excel sheets, and adding a layer of intelligence to ERPs. At the same time, he met Javier LaFuente, founder of Decide Soluciones, a Spanish company dealing with analytics and optimization that had clients such as Airbus, Carrefour, and Mapfre.

In January 2014, mStore Operations was accepted to startup accelerator Venture Hive, based in Miami, Florida. That summer, Miragall joined mStore Operations with extensive experience in supply chain, finance, and strategy consulting.

Founding of Nextail
Nextail was founded in October, 2014 as an evolution of mStore Operations, applying artificial intelligence, machine learning, and prescriptive analytics to improve inventory allocation and replenishment. The vision of the founders was to build “a next generation solution with a high component of design that would be affordable and easy to use for everyone in the organization from store managers to managing directors.”

In 2016, Nextail closed $1.6 million in a funding round led by Nauta Capital with participation from existing backer, Realiza, bringing the total raised to $2 million.

In late 2017, Nextail was selected from among more than 3,500 startups as one of the 100 finalists to compete in the Lifestyle & Fashion category at leading European startup conference, South Summit, in Madrid. The company was awarded “Best Lifestyle & Fashion startup” and “Best Startup Team”. By the end of the year, the company grew to 45 employees from 10 different countries.

Series A - present
In mid 2018, the company raised $10 million in Series A funding led by venture capital firm KEEN Venture Partners LLP with participation from Sonae IM, and existing investor Nauta Capital.

By the first quarter of 2019, Nextail had approximately 100 employees with operations and clients in Spain, Italy, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. The company was selected along with 15 others to participate in the Lafayette Plug and Play innovation program and was named a Finalist for the LVMH Innovation Award, announced at the Viva Technology (VivaTech) event held in Paris, France.

Technology
Nextail’s main technological offering is a cloud-based platform for retail merchandising that uses artificial intelligence and prescriptive analytics to automate inventory management decision making.

Specifically, the platform stock management solutions, a business intelligence dashboard, and a mobile application for store managers.

Nextail’s software algorithm logic is based on the following principles:
 * Demand based vs. sales-based forecast
 * Optimization to maximize sales across a network of stores
 * Restriction considerations (e.g. key size, display, trips, etc.)
 * Meritocracy: stores are ranked based on the probability of selling each unit
 * Pull vs. push system
 * Data-driven decision mechanism

Customers
According to the website, customers include Versace, River Island, Pepe Jeans, Twinset, Cortefiel, Melon Fashion Group, Neck & Neck, TVOE, Gocco, Stefanel, Aristocrazy, Impecável and, Amichi.