Fits.me announced total Series A investment in the company of close to £5 million. Series A investment has been subscribed by existing investor SmartCap, with new participation from Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur’s Fund.
Previously, in May 2009 and August 2010, the company received total seed and early-stage investment of just under £1.75m from Smartcap and angel investors, and £0.5m in grants.
Fits.me develops, markets and operates virtual fitting room solutions on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis for online clothing retailers, helping them to overcome the problems of low online conversion rates and high garment returns rates caused by doubt over fit and poor fit respectively.
The company counts many well-known retailers among its clients, including Adidas, Avenue32, Barbour By Mail, Boden, Ermenegildo Zegna, Hawes & Curtis, Henri Lloyd, Hugo Boss, John Smedley, L.K.Bennett, Mexx, Nicole Farhi, Otto, Pretty Green, Superdry and Thomas Pink.
Fits.me will use the new funding to support accelerated Sales and Marketing programmes – including international expansion into the France, Germany, other EU countries and the USA – and to continue to scale up its Operations to meet predicted demand.
Conor Venture Partners’ Manu Mäkelä said: “While large swathes of retailing already takes place online, there are sectors for which the real online growth has yet to come. Apparel is chief among those sectors, primarily because buying clothes is such a subjective process – most obviously when it comes to ‘fit’.
"Fits.me has a sophisticated solution that works, delivers provable results, is easy for retailers to deploy and has been signed up by a growing band of respected retailers and brands, on an international basis. From an investor’s point of view, there is tremendous growth potential.”
In February 2013 the company launched Fit Advisor, a complementary version of the company’s flagship Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room solution which delivers fit information and recommendations without the need for photography.
Heikki Haldre, co-founder and chief executive at Fits.me, said: “We are in a market that has started to move very quickly as retailers look to overcome their high street difficulties by focusing on online performance. It should be clear to everyone that we mean to do very good business by helping online clothing retailers to solve one of their most pressing problems.”
About Fits.me
Fits.me’s virtual fitting room solutions helps boost the revenues and the profitability of online clothing retailers by enabling them to overcome the online fit problem, increasing conversions and reducing garment returns.
The subjective nature of “fit” as it applies to clothing and fashion has inhibited online apparel sales for years – in 2012 the overall proportion of garment sales from online channels was still only 14-15%.
The essential problem is the inability of shoppers to try on clothes to check the fit before they choose their size, while ‘fit’ is a matter of personal preference rather than mathematics. According to Mintel, widespread inconsistencies in sizing between different brands and retailers make online clothes shopping a challenge for six in ten shoppers.
