Fits.me has won £5m in funding which it plans to use to underpin expansion into Europe and the US, while also scaling up existing operations.
The virtual fitting room provider, whose clients include Adidas, Hugo Boss , Superdry and Boden, has won Series A funding from existing investor SmartCap, alongside new investors Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur’s Fund.
The money comes on top of previous seed and early stage investment of just under £1.75m, and grants worth £0.5m.
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.”
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.”
Fits.me’s software-as-a-service technology uses male and female robotic mannequins with artificial muscles that enable it to mimic any size or shape of body. Mannequins are dressed in representative items from the retailer’s range, in each available size. Each permutation of garment/size is then photographed while the robotic mannequin morphs through thousands of body shapes, whether for a dress or a shirt. The end results enables customers to view how they might look in different sizes of clothing.
In February 2013 Fits.me launched Fit Advisor, which delivers fit information and recommendations without the need for photography.
