Exploring Fashion Supply Chains and Technology with Stephanie Benedetto, the "Queen of Raw”

This is Part 1 of a 2 part lightning talk series. "Are you naked right now? You’re not…because you’re using fabric. It’s everywhere! It’s where it’s supposed to be, covering things like us, and where it’s not supposed to be.” This was the opening 10 seconds of Stephanie’s award-winning pitch to Ashton Kutcher, Sean “Diddy” Combs, & Gary Vaynerchuk in 60 seconds at the WeWork Creator Awards where she scored a grand prize of $360,000. Queen of Raw then closed a $1.5M priced seed round led by True Wealth Ventures with minority investor MIT Solve. You’ll hear it in this episode along with insights on how to get funding for your tech start up with a winning pitch.

Episode 31 is a 2-part lightning talk series exploring Stephanie Benedetto’s journey from corporate attorney, to sustainability tech entrepreneur. Her family has been in the fashion supply chain business for over 100 years! Benedetto saw the problem first hand and together they built the Queen of Raw solution: a B2B platform for businesses to recapture value from their wasted materials rather than burning them. 

This episode provides: an overview of the fashion supply chain, its impact on the world we share and why textile production is the second biggest polluting industry in the world. Did you know that one tee shirt takes 700 gallons of water to produce? Bringing $120 billion worth of unused textiles back to life, the Queen of Raw has already saved over one billion gallons of water while saving businesses millions of dollars with supply chain efficiency. Why is an optimized supply chain the solution for people, for planet, and for profit? You’ll learn why sustainability and circularity are the answer in the future of fashion. 

We also explore Stephanie’s journey including her advice to women-owned technology start-ups! Some of Stephanie’s awards include: Grand Prize WeWork Creator Awards, Cartier Women’s Initiative, Laureate MIT Solve Global Challenge Winner, LVMH Innovation Award, NASA/NIKE/IKEA/DELL Innovator Finalist, Google Women Who Tech Fashion Group International Rising Star, thredUP Circular Fashion Fund Recipient

Learn more about Stephanie here -  http://www.queenofraw.com 

Industry: SaaS Software, Supply Chain, Textiles, Blockchain, Machine Learning/AI, Marketplace Launched: Q3 2018

Find us, connect, and explore at https://www.supplychainrevolution.com/