In today’s fast-moving retail world, the journey from a designer’s initial sketch to a finished garment on a retail rack remains archaic. While consumer trends shift at the speed of a TikTok scroll, the apparel industry’s infrastructure drags behind. Supply chain friction, endless revisions to technical documentation, language barriers across global factories and long sampling cycles often mean bringing a single clothing item to market takes months or over a year.

Industry insiders know this age-old operational headache all too well. As one industry veteran famously put it, “you can make two babies in the time it takes to make one garment.”

Enter Calico AI, a Toronto-based technology company aiming to overhaul how apparel brands source, price and produce their lines. Fresh off a $15 million Series A funding round, Calico positions itself as an end-to-end product-creation engine designed to replace outdated software, messy spreadsheets and fragmented email threads with streamlined, agentic AI.

To accelerate expansion, Calico recently appointed Derek Galkin as chief momentum officer, a new role aimed at deepening brand partnerships and driving commercial growth. Galkin, an entrepreneur best known as a founding partner of California footwear brand SeaVees, brings over two decades of brand-building and executive experience. His career includes work with Deckers, Oakley, Todd Snyder and James Perse.

Galkin’s arrival strengthens a leadership team focused on combining tech-driven innovation with deep operational industry experience.

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