Higg Co raises US$50m in funding round

SAN FRANCISCO – Higg Co, the off-shoot of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, has announced it has raised US$50m in a Series B funding round. The funding is co-led by technology growth investor Silversmith Capital Partners and Tom Steyer and Katie Hall’s Galvanize Climate Solutions, along with participation by Series A partners Titan Grove and Buckhill Capital.

Higg now has close to 50,000 brand and manufacturer users in more than 100 countries. Higg claims to offer, “continuous improvement of supply chain sustainability – across not only carbon but water, energy, and labor impacts as well.”

However, the only independent study so far carried out on Higg raises legitimate question marks over this claim. In 2020, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley carried out a painstaking study of the Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM) tool, using primary and secondary research. They failed to find any “conclusive data” to show the Higg FEM had helped improve environmental performance in apparel supply chains.