Pietra, a startup that helps creators and celebrities like Chrissy Teigen launch and manage their own brands, is diving deeper into the crucial behind-the-scenes work it takes to get a hot new product up and running.

The company is acquiring Factored Quality, a startup that works with popular brands like Brooklinen to set them up with staffers for quality control, compliance and factory auditing. Those kinds of workers keep an eye on the factories brands work with around the world, which can be a tough task for an e-commerce newbie to arrange on their own.

Pietra, which has raised more than $36 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, already connects founders with many of the services they need to launch a brand, from factories to make their products to creative designers to dream up labels. Pietra grew quickly by focusing on the burgeoning business of creators selling goods directly to shoppers from their social feeds, working with Teigen on her kitchen line Cravings, and actor Seth Rogen on his cannabis accessories brand Houseplant.

“We're living in a social-first world—people that are starting these businesses are going to have these online audiences, they're going to be TikTok and Instagram-first, and that was kind of the first Cambrian explosion of Pietra,” the company’s founder and CEO Ronak Trivedi said.

Pietra and Factored Quality, founded by former NASA supply chain engineer Prince Ghosh in 2021, already have an overlapping customer base and often refer business to each other, Trivedi and Ghosh said. For example, both have worked with The Honest Company, the publicly traded Jessica Alba-founded personal care brand.

Factored Quality had a pre-money valuation of $24 million in 2022, according to PitchBook, and has raised money from investors including Y Combinator, Vinyl Capital, Pari Passu Venture Partners and DTC branding agency Red Antler. Trivedi and Ghosh wouldn’t comment on the exact value of the all-equity deal.

Pietra’s customer base had grown beyond celebrities, as creator-led brands have “showed the world that there's a new type of operator and business owner,” Trivedi said. He said the distinction between creator brands and other e-commerce sellers has vanished over the past few years, since so many brands have embraced selling products through social media.

For example, Mr Beast's candy and snack line Feastables shouldn’t be considered a different kind of e-commerce brand just because of its famous founder, Trivedi said. “These are all just businesses that exist in a creator-first world, which is going to be the case for the next 50 years,” he said.

Ghosh and the rest of Factored Quality and Pietra’s leadership will start to merge the companies’ operations over the next few months. And in the coming year, the combined company will focus on a new pool of potential business, by courting the next generation taking over family-owned manufacturing businesses around the world.

“As a lot of these factory owners are getting older, starting to retire, starting to hand over the reins of running these suppliers and these factories to their children, what we're seeing is this resurgence of factories also wanting to go direct-to-consumer,” Ghosh said.

The idea is that digital-savvy operators can develop their own brands and sell directly to shoppers, like popular direct-from-manufacturer sellers like Shein and Quince do already—essentially becoming a new kind of creator, he said.

“Imagine 100 Sheins or 100 Quinces—that's a crazy world, right?” Trivedi said.

Here’s what else is going on…

Deals & Debuts

See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.

Project Liberty, a group led by billionaire Frank McCourt, has secured informal investor commitments of more than $20 billion for a “people’s bid” to buy TikTok, a spokesperson told Axios.

Skims announced a limited-edition line of winter and ski clothing through a collaboration with The North Face. The 14-piece collection, which launches Dec. 10, includes beanies, leggings, fleece jackets and outerwear.

EdenX, a generative AI tool that creates characters that can appear in personalized video clips, launched Thursday. The company plans to eventually add interactive role-playing games using the video clips.

Google launched video generator Veo, along with weather prediction model GenCast and Genie 2, which generates 3D video game worlds from images.

People on the Move

Katerina Kosta, a former research scientist at TikTok and ByteDance, is joining music-sharing app Hook as its head of AI. Hook also hired Prash Mistry, a Grammy-nominated engineer and producer that has worked with artists like Olivia Rodrigo and SZA, as its head of audio development and general manager of UK operations.

Creator Corner

Spotify plans to host a pop-up podcast studio in Washington, D.C. during Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Bloomberg reported. The company is also planning to host a brunch that weekend that celebrates “the power of podcasts in this election,” the report said.

Bobbi Althoff will join the cast of romantic comedy “Love Language,” Deadline reported. SNL star Chloe Fineman and actress Chloe Grace Moretz will also appear in the film.

Haliey Welch, also known as “Hawk Tuah Girl,” launched a memecoin, HAWK, on the Solana blockchain on Wednesday. HAWK hit a peak market cap of $490 million before dropping sharply, prompting some social media users to accuse Welch’s team of pumping and dumping the coin.

Flau’jae Johnson, a star player on LSU’s women’s basketball team, signed a name, image and likeness deal with the new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league Unrivaled. Johnson, who has more than 3.5 million followers on social media, can’t play in the league until she turns professional, but will take an equity stake in Unrivaled and collaborate with the league on content this season. Unrivaled will also promote Johnson’s burgeoning rap career—she signed to Roc Nation in 2021.

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