Save Your Wardrobe has secured £2.5 million in the largest seed investment round for a circular wardrobe platform in the UK.
The funding will help the London business to continue to drive positive change in the fashion industry with an increased European expansion and improvements to its product and technology.
Since its founding in 2017, Save Your Wardrobe has set out to drive a systemic change in the fashion industry with its simple circular platform that brings consumers, local businesses and global brands together.
Offering access to a range of aftercare services that gives them the opportunity to not only alter and repair but also eco-clean, customise and upcycle their clothes, it says it allows users to extend the life of their garments whilst supporting local tailors, cleaners and craftspeople.
Save Your Wardrobe also uses artificial intelligence, allowing garments to be easily scanned, identified and stored in users’ virtual wardrobes. This makes it easy to curate outfits, prevent cluttering your wardrobe with duplicate items, and share personal style inspirations with fellow circular fashionistas.
Founder and CEO Hasna Kourda grew up in Tunisia, North Africa where sustainable practices like caring, reusing and repurposing garments were common practice. Upon witnessing the excessive levels of consumption and rise of fast fashion in Europe, she was inspired to create a solution to encourage consumers to make better decisions when it came to their wardrobes.
“This investment round marks an incredibly exciting time for the Save Your Wardrobe team,” said Kourda. “Technology is at the forefront of our business and this investment allows us to really deliver on our mission to be pioneers in the circular fashion movement, with the most innovative technology to eradicate throw away culture.”
The funding will allow the startup to expand across the European market with a focus on business in the UK, Germany and France. It will also contribute to growing the business’s product and technology teams and scale up its B2B offering, having already secured a partnership with one of the world’s biggest global retailers, Zalando.
Zalando collaborated with Save your Wardrobe launching a Care & Repair initiative, to help meet its ambitious target of extending the life of 50 million garments by 2023.
To support them in achieving this goal, Save Your Wardrobe built a custom Care and Repair solution to facilitate connecting Zalando’s customers with a network of aftercare specialists across Berlin, while also offering the online retailer insights into their customers’ behaviours and wardrobe preferences.
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