Quality idea

Most people are aware of how Covid-19 strangled the global supply chain, stoking scarcity and inflation. A lesser-known story is the impact that travel restrictions and cost controls have had on quality control.

As the pandemic raged, U.S. companies found it harder to reach their foreign manufacturers, resulting in fewer inspections and maybe hurting the reputation of their brands.

 A pair of startup savvy Case alumni think they have a solution, and deeppocketed investors seem to agree. Prince Ghosh ’19 and Lucas Fridman ’19 are co-founders of Factored Quality, a startup that says it can connect U.S. businesses with quality control inspectors in foreign nations while updating a traditionladen field.

In February, the company announced attracting $5.6 million from investors in a seed funding round led by Amity Ventures.

Ghosh, the CEO of Factored Quality, told Modern Shipper that the company can connect brands to third-party inspectors anywhere in the world with on-demand booking, and that the service is badly needed.

“Geopolitical tensions, trade wars, and logistics constraints have forced modern brands to take a decentralized and lean infrastructural approach to manufacturing,” he said. “We’re building Factored Quality to help those brands scale their quality and manufacturing operations with ease.”

Not unlike other services in the gig economy, the platform allows the company and the inspector to post reviews and ratings of each other.

“This team has the right founder market fit to deliver,” Patrick Yang, general partner at Amity Ventures, told the magazine.

Ghosh and Fridman previously founded Workbench Technologies, a supply chain management software company for the e-commerce industry. They launched Factored Quality in 2021 with Justin Seidenfeld, whom they met when they went through Y Combinator, a renowned startup accelerator.