Material Exchange

MATERIAL EXCHANGE VENTURES AB

Building the infrastructure layer for global fashion & footwear sourcing

Material Exchange Ventures is the company behind Frank – the AI research assistant turning fragmented supplier communication into structured, verifiable supply chain intelligence.

Frank AI bear illustration for sourcing workflows
Frank AI bear illustration for sourcing workflows

MATERIAL EXCHANGE VENTURES AB

Building the infrastructure layer for global fashion & footwear sourcing

Material Exchange Ventures is the company behind Frank – the AI research assistant turning fragmented supplier communication into structured, verifiable supply chain intelligence.

From platform to protocol

We spent a decade building sourcing platforms for fashion and footwear brands. That work taught us the industry’s real bottleneck: platforms require suppliers to adopt something new, and most never do.

Frank is our answer. It’s not a platform – it’s an AI-native, email-first system that meets brands and suppliers where they already work, turning ordinary email exchanges into a structured, continuously-updating supplier knowledge graph.

One email. Global supply.

Frank is an AI supply-chain research assistant for fashion and footwear. Brands ask sourcing questions by email; Frank searches what’s known, goes back to suppliers when something’s missing, and returns a sourced, dated answer. Suppliers use Frank too – to decode briefs, close evidence gaps, and stay answer-ready.

No login. No onboarding project. No platform to adopt.

  • Free, by emailopen network, ask anything about the industry
  • Private deploymentFrank inside your own supplier network, your rules, your data
  • In production today with a multi-billion-dollar U.S. footwear brand and a major European fashion group

A decade of supply chain infrastructure

Material Exchange (2019 to now) 

Built and scaled a sourcing and material intelligence platform for the fashion and footwear industry.

Material Exchange Ventures (today)

The team regrouped around a different thesis: the reason sourcing platforms don’t stick is that they ask suppliers to change behavior. Frank removes that requirement entirely – it works inside the email inbox suppliers already use.

FDRA and industry partnerships

Material Exchange Ventures maintains long-standing relationships with trade associations including FDRA (U.S. footwear), CLE and ISF (India leather and export bodies) – the distribution backbone for Frank’s supplier network growth. Programme details live on askfrank.com