Marine Layer
“Can a premium-softness apparel brand scale a national omnichannel retail presence while keeping back-office finance lean enough for a sub-100-person HQ team?”
Founded2009
HQSan Francisco, CA
FoundersMike Natenshon
Total raised$10.49M
Latest roundLoan, April 2020
IndustryE-commerce / Retail
The story
Founded in 2009 as a DTC apparel brand obsessed with fabric softness, Marine Layer grew from a single San Francisco storefront into a ~58-location national retailer backed by private equity. The company's embedded-finance angle is operational rather than product-facing: it adopted BILL early (since 2014) to streamline AP/AR and expense management as it scaled its store network, and plugged in buy-now-pay-later options (Sezzle, Zip) to reduce checkout friction for consumers. Marine Layer remains a privately held, B Corp-certified brand with no disclosed fintech ambitions.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2009
Founded by Mike Natenshon in San Francisco, initially selling a single super-soft t-shirt· pivot
2013
Raised first angel funding to grow the direct-to-consumer apparel brand· banking
2014
Adopted BILL (then Bill.com) for accounts payable, accounts receivable, and spend management, integrated with NetSuite· banking
2018
Secured growth equity from Isos Capital Management to expand retail footprint· acquisition
2020
Received $3.5M loan during COVID-19 disruption to support operations· banking
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Marine Layer’s embedded-finance stack
Lending
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
2 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.