Alante Capital
About
Alante Capital invests in levers for systemic change in the fashion industry: in B2B companies that develop tools and innovations to make the apparel industry more sustainable and circular and address climate-related risks for apparel companies. It seeks solutions that have high climate change mitigation potential.
Alante Capital was started in 2017 to address social and climate risks across the fashion industry, such as the use of fossil-fuel-based materials, the unsustainable production of plant-based ones, microfibre pollution, or the scale of consumption and waste. In Alante Capital’s view, addressing climate change presents new opportunities for innovation and abovemarket returns.
Type of actor
Venture capital
Investment type
Private; one $12 million fund with a typical ticket size of $150,000 to $1 million in pre-seed, seed, and series A investments. In 2022, raising a second fund with a target of $50 million with a $100 million cap.
Operates in
United States, Europe, with plans to expand to Asia and South America
Approach
Alante invests in deep tech, cleantech, consumer tech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies that have potential to serve the entire industry with tools and innovations such as biodegradable alternatives to polyester and plastic, novel reuse and resale platforms, and garment or materials recycling solutions.
It tracks carbon emissions, waste, energy use, water use, employment, inclusivity and other impact metrics from its investee companies.
The existence of a fund addressing fashion’s sustainability is, implicitly, gendered: women make up roughly 80% of workers in the global garment industry, and women are significant consumers and innovators of fashion and other retail goods. Alante Capital is women-founded and -led, and tracks gender and other diversity metrics in investee companies’ leadership, including in the C-suite and at board level. Alante’s view is that diverse teams especially mitigate business risks for companies in the fashion industry.
Its investments include the women-founded and women-led Novoloop, Mango Materials, and Sway. Eventually, says co-founder Karla Mora, the fund aims to have an impact on labour: through circular solutions that also expand economic opportunities for women in the informal workforce, for example, or by upskilling and reskilling women garment workers to ready them for greater automation in production. Ultimately, through its investments, Alante seeks to transform the way fashion is produced, sold, used, and recycled.
Impact
Many of Alante’s investments are at an early stage, but its portfolio has risen in value, with no failures or down rounds to date. Alante is now in the early process of raising a much larger second early-stage fund and an additional opportunity fund. It has observed inbound interest from investors committed to investing to address climate change, or with a focus on sustainability and a circular economy for the apparel industry.
“Alante’s view is that diverse teams especially mitigate business risks for companies in the fashion industry, as women are significant consumers and innovators of fashion and other retail goods.”
Key takeaways
Alante was initially positioned as an impact fund, but found this positioning was slow to raise capital. When it repositioned as a conventional fund investing in climate technologies with above-market returns, fundraising was faster. “Figure out who your company relates to, and who it is solving a problem for, and go to those investors,” says Mora.
What’s next?
Alante’s next fund will retain its focus on climate mitigation impacts, but expand its sector focus to companies serving other related consumer sectors, such as home goods. It seeks to transform the way consumers interact with everyday products by funding innovations that address labour and social challenges alongside climate ones.