Innovation Warehouse backs CO
Stephen Bloch is the investment lead at Innovation Warehouse - a community for digital high-growth startup businesses in London.
Innovation Warehouse work with ambitious, early-stage companies with solid, intelligent technical solutions and strong IP - and they have backed CO as an investor since 2018.
In this blog, Stephen shares his thoughts on the opportunity CO presents to investors, and why sustainability matters in today’s investment world.
Why did Innovation Warehouse invest in CO?
From an investor perspective the impact and potential financial rewards of the network effect possible from a platform such as Common Objective is compelling. By bringing together suppliers and buyers onto one platform prioritising sustainable and ethical practices, it provides a valuable and necessary step forward for one of the world’s largest industries.
I believe that Common Objective creates a valuable opportunity to facilitate necessary progressive changes to the fashion industry supply chain, the brands, and for the consumer.
How do you see CO responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and the challenges created by it?
We will see well-known brands disappear in 2020-2021 and manufacturers close. This will also affect the livelihoods of workers not just in the UK but factory workers and farm labourers in producing countries in for instance Bangladesh, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
Common Objective has the ability to assist producers to find new buyers as the industry begins to recover from the pandemic and the aftershock, especially as new micro-brands begin to emerge requiring supply.
CO is in a strong position to create a highly valuable industry marketplace.
Why is investing in sustainability important to Innovation Warehouse?
Sustainability investing brings strong investor ROI, with the additional benefit of social ROI. Simply, sustainability is good for business.
What do you think is most important to investors as we emerge from Covid-19?
The business and social environment will be very different moving forward - businesses including Common Objective have to demonstrate to investors that they recognise this and have adapted their business models accordingly.
Become a CO shareholder
The global CO community is catalysing a new way of doing business. We’re crowdfunding to accelerate our growth and we would like to give you the chance to become a co-owner of CO, and share in our success.
Our crowdfunding campaign is now in overfunding and closes on Friday 22nd May - visit our pitch on Crowdcube.
Capital at risk.