Daash Intelligence, a predictive commerce intelligence platform designed for retail brands, announced the completion of a $5.5 million second seed funding round, bringing its total funding to $8.25 million. The round was led by Bullpen Capital, with participation from GFT Ventures, Silicon Road Ventures, and returning investor Red Bike Capital.
The funding aims to enhance Daash’s ability to deliver actionable data insights, a critical resource for cosmetics and personal care brands navigating competitive markets.
“Beauty is a fiercely competitive retail category, and beauty and personal care brands need affordable data insights that help them understand market trends as they are occurring, not weeks or months later,” said Philip Smolin, Co-founder and CEO of Daash Intelligence in the company’s press announcement.
The new funding will allow Daash to scale its engineering and go-to-market teams and accelerate product development to meet increasing demand.
Daash’s proprietary AI platform offers weekly retailer-specific updates for a wide array of categories, including color cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care. By integrating multiple data sources, the platform provides accurate sales and velocity estimates, enabling brands to identify shifts in market share and take timely action.
According to Smolin, Daash equips beauty brands with “a powerful early indication of where their market opportunities lie, so they can act quickly to take advantage of emerging trends and maximize their sales.”
Addressing gaps in competitive insights
Mid-sized and smaller beauty brands often lack access to robust data analytics traditionally available to larger conglomerates. CosmeticsDesign spoke to Melissa Munnerlyn, Co-Founder and CMO of Daash Intelligence, who highlighted this disparity, noting, “The largest brand conglomerates have the resources to invest heavily in licensing data and employing data scientists to analyze it. For mid-market and emerging brands, this level of access has often been out of reach.”
Daash’s AI-driven platform bridges this gap by offering affordable, comprehensive insights that are updated weekly and cover a brand’s competitive set.
Tasks that once required extensive manual research can now be completed in minutes. Munnerlyn also emphasized the platform’s efficiency: “This empowers even the smallest teams to operate with a data-driven approach, enhancing both their daily operations and long-term strategic planning.”
Accelerating product development
Daash plans to enhance the platform’s capabilities with its latest funding. Munnerlyn explained, “we are accelerating our platform development to broaden data coverage and enhance our predictive AI capabilities, providing even deeper competitive insights across sales performance, positioning and pricing, launch planning, and trend identification.”
Additionally, the company intends to expand into adjacent categories such as personal care and health and wellness.
Brands currently leveraging Daash include Amika, Glow Recipe, Ilia, and Tatcha. Sarah Lee, Co-CEO and Co-founder of Glow Recipe praised the platform in the company’s press release, sharing that “we love the holistic view of the skin care landscape and having access to the market data down to SKU-level stats across all categories.”
Further, Lee added, “having a good grasp of the context of our growth and the market’s growth, along with insights into product and ingredient trends, is super helpful as we roadmap our product pipeline and continue on our strong growth trajectory.”
Beauty industry impact
Daash’s predictive analytics offer brands insights into emerging trends, enabling faster, data-driven decision-making. “From predicting SKU velocities to identifying shifts in market share, our platform equips brands to act quickly on emerging trends,” said Munnerlyn. These capabilities allow brands to adjust pricing, optimize marketing, and increase the accuracy of launch purchase orders.
In the company’s press announcement, Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital, praised Daash’s innovation in commerce intelligence. “The experienced team of co-founders identified a void in the commerce intelligence space and moved quickly to fill it,” said Martino, “using AI to unlock the predictive insights midsized and smaller brands need to compete with even the biggest beauty behemoths.”
Reflecting on the evolving role of AI in the beauty industry, Munnerlyn concluded that she believes “beauty brands live at the intersection of art and science,” adding “are data-driven insights becoming a competitive necessity? Absolutely.”
