By Shirley Romig, Chief Operating Officer, Techstars

Every global brand has a supply chain compliance problem they're underfunding, and tariffs just made it impossible to ignore.

For decades, the workflow looked the same — human auditors flying to factories, paper checklists, disconnected lab reports, and compliance teams manually chasing documentation across hundreds of suppliers in a spreadsheet. It was slow, expensive, and structurally incapable of keeping pace with how fast regulatory requirements are changing.

Inspectorio, a Techstars portfolio company, built the AI platform replacing that entire workflow. Their system digitizes quality management, responsible sourcing, lab testing, and traceability into a single connected platform — giving brands real-time visibility across their production chain rather than a quarterly snapshot assembled by hand.

In 2025, Inspectorio powered $340 billion in total revenue across its client base, optimized product integrity for 4 billion products, and connected 15,000 suppliers globally. Urban Outfitters and Mango are among the brands that moved their compliance operations onto the platform within the last six months. Inspectorio's own State of Supply Chain Report 2025 found that fewer than 10% of companies have achieved near-full automation of key supply chain functions — which means there is tremendous opportunity here still.

Companies that move their supply chain infrastructure off manual processes now will have a structural advantage when the next tariff shock hits.

Read Shirley's original post on LinkedIn.

Read More