Catching Up with Red Clay: Pivot Leads to 'Significant Traction'
It's been a while since we last visited IA client firm Red Clay.
Red Clay is the Innovate Arkansas client firm founded in Bentonville back in 2010 by Abby Kiefer, a San Francisco transplant.
After moving to Northwest Arkansas for her husband's job, Kiefer launched her crowdsourcing platform for sustainable home décor.
Red Clay eventually pivoted away from the manufacturing and retail side to a more technical focus, and Kiefer moved back full-time to the Bay area where she could access more tech talent.
(We're still working on that here in Arkansas; progress is being made.)
But she maintains contacts as well as relationships with suppliers and friends in NWA and returns a few weeks a year.
Plus, Kiefer kept her NWA-based Red Clay lawyers and financial advisors who help the firm maintain an Arkansas connection. Kiefer remains a big Bentonville fan, and plans are to put Red Clay "boots on the ground" once again in Bentonville.
The pivot has been a successful one, generating "significant traction," Kiefer says. The focus now is connecting, as the website says, "companies, from start-ups to global enterprises, to a community of award winning designers and provides software to efficiently manage the design process from idea to manufacturing."
Our qualified community, smart approach to talent-project matching, and structured, streamlined process eliminate the common obstacles of project management and let you focus on design solutions.
Kiefer believes the pivot is more of a problem solver than Red Clay's original iteration, and a $1 million seed funding round and $250,000 in generated revenue confirmed the pivot was the right move.
Kiefer says more than 100 products have been run through the new platform, which was tested and refined in partnership with Dillard's. Seems Kiefer remains connected to Arkansas in many ways.
"The relationships that we're building with Walmart and the supplier community are phenomenal," she said. "It's been really helpful to still a presence in Arkansas."
Public launch of the new platform was held in June, and Red Clay recently held a "thank-you reception" in Bentonville for investors and supporters.
Kiefer hopes to raise a series A round over the winter, which could lead to that Bentonville office re-opening. Red Clay employs six full time with plans to add two more possibly by the end of the month.
Stay tuned. More to come…