Ever since sharing the same office as the Publishzer / TheFashionMag guys (no longer in development) I’ve been looking for more startup innovation in the fashion world. It’s a huge market where money is actually flowing, but is an industry left untackled by the 20 something male startup founder that typically gets in touch with us.
That’s not to say this market is completely absent from startups, especially with the news that TheFashion.com announcing last night that they’ve raised €1.37 million in funding by Copenhagen-based North East Venture Capital and the Danish Growth Fund. The company itself is split between London and Copenhagen and initially raised $400,000 (€321,000) from Rainmaking before officially launching in May of 2014. Since then their traffic has grown to “hundreds of thousands” of users per month.
The site comes down to one part discovery and one part webshop. The clean design is more store like, but uses algorithms and machine-learning technology to better tailor what type of fashion products and styles are shown to the user. To source these deals they’ve plugged into large online retailers like ASOS, Farfetch, My-Theresa and TheOutnet as well as several hundred smaller national online shops.
“The online fashion industry is fragmented and competitive like never before,” says Kasper Vardrup, Founder & CEO. “TheFashion.com was born out of our own frustrations at how time-consuming it is to shop for fashion online. Our ambition is to create a one-stop destination for finding the product you love.”
With this funding wrapped up they’ll be honing in on their algorithms with growth on their mind. While originally TheFashion launched in the UK, US and Denmark, the team is planning to roll out its platform in northern Europe in the next few months on a country-by-country basis, first targeting Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.
