Tailor, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform based in San Francisco and Tokyo, has raised US$22 million in a series A funding round.

The investment was led by Anri, JIC Venture Growth Investments, New Enterprise Associates, Spiral Capital, and Y Combinator.

Founded in 2021, Tailor offers an ERP system called Omakase, which separates the user interface from the ERP core.

This structure allows for customization and integration flexibility.

CEO Yo Shibata said that Omakase enables AI agents to access the system via API.

This automates tasks such as summarizing customer histories and triggering workflows.

Initially targeting retail and ecommerce, Tailor is expanding to B2B sectors to handle complex needs like advanced and personalized orders.

The company, with about 50 staff globally, plans to use the funds to grow in the US, improve product development, and strengthen its Japan presence.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Headless architecture represents a broader shift in enterprise software development

Tailor’s approach reflects a wider industry movement away from monolithic software designs that gained momentum with companies like Amazon and Netflix in the mid-2010s.

Major enterprises have been transitioning from all-in-one architectures to more modular microservices to improve deployment speed and reduce development bottlenecks 1.

This architectural shift has yielded measurable business benefits. For example, a global toymaker using headless architecture reduced their time-to-market from 6-8 months to just 4 weeks by leveraging API reusability and decoupled systems 2.

Tailor’s ERP strategy aligns with the principles of successful headless eCommerce platforms, which separate user interfaces from core functionality to provide greater flexibility in creating customer experiences.

The company’s positioning against traditional ERP vendors like SAP and Oracle reflects the tension between established, integrated systems and newer, more adaptable approaches that emphasize modularity.