{"id":653195,"date":"2013-04-18T13:50:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T17:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pehub.com\/?p=197129"},"modified":"2013-04-18T13:50:21","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T17:50:21","slug":"fits-me-raises-close-to-7-6m-from-smartcap-conor-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/653195","title":{"rendered":"Fits.me Raises Close To $7.6M From SmartCap, Conor, Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fits.me<\/strong> said it raised almost $7.6 million in a Series A round from existing investor SmartCap<\/strong> and new investors Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited<\/strong> and The Entrepreneur\u2019s Fund.<\/strong> The company in May 2009 and August 2010 received seed and early-stage investments of slightly less than $2.67 million from Smartcap and angel investors.<\/p>\n

PRESS RELEASE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Virtual fitting room provider Fits.me takes \u00a35m\u2028in Series A funding<\/p>\n

London, UK \u2013 April 18th 2013 \u2013 Fits.me today announced total Series A investment in the company of close to \u00a35 million. \u00a0Series A investment has been subscribed by existing investor SmartCap, with new participation from Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur\u2019s Fund.
\nPreviously, in May 2009 and August 2010, the company received total seed and early-stage investment of just under \u00a31.75m from Smartcap and angel investors, and \u00a30.5m in grants.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Fits.me will use the new funding to support accelerated Sales and Marketing programmes \u2013 including international expansion into the France, Germany, other EU countries and the USA \u2013 and to continue to scale up its Operations to meet predicted demand.<\/p>\n

Conor Venture Partners\u2019 Manu M\u00e4kel\u00e4 said: \u201cWhile large swathes of retailing already takes place online, there are sectors for which the real online growth has yet to come.\u00a0 Apparel is chief among those sectors, primarily because buying clothes is such a subjective process \u2013 most obviously when it comes to \u2018fit\u2019. 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.\u00a0 From an investor\u2019s point of view, there is tremendous growth potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February 2013 the company launched Fit Advisor, a complementary version of the company\u2019s flagship Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room solution which delivers fit information and recommendations without the need for photography.<\/p>\n

Heikki Haldre, co-founder and chief executive at Fits.me, said: \u201cWe 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.\u00a0 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.\u201d
\n[ends]<\/p>\n

About Fits.me\u2028Fits.me\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The subjective nature of \u201cfit\u201d as it applies to clothing and fashion has inhibited online apparel sales for years \u2013 in 2012 the overall proportion of garment sales from online channels was still only 14-15%.\u00a0 The essential problem is the inability of shoppers to try on clothes to check the fit before they choose their size, while \u2018fit\u2019 is a matter of personal preference rather than mathematics.\u00a0 According to Mintel, widespread inconsistencies in sizing between different brands and retailers make online clothes shopping a challenge for six in ten shoppers.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Fits.me\u2019s software-as-a-service solution are sophisticated robotic mannequins, both male and female, with artificial muscles that enable it to mimic any size or shape of body.\u00a0 To populate the database of any given brand or retailer, these mannequins are dressed in representative items from the retailer\u2019s range, in each available size.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The output of this process is a comprehensive image database \u2013 and, for each image, the precise dimensions of the mannequin are recorded.<\/p>\n

On a retailer\u2019s site, Fits.me displays the photograph from the database that shows exactly how the garment the shopper is looking at will fit their body size and shape, simply by asking that shopper for a few common measurements.<\/p>\n

With further clicks, the shopper may check how they will look wearing other sizes, before choosing the size that fits them the way they like it.\u00a0 The Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room will even alert the shopper to where the fit of the chosen garment may be wrong \u2013 for example, in arm length or collar size \u2013 just as a shop assistant would do in a bricks-and-mortar store.<\/p>\n

Data from online clothing retailers using Fits.me shows an improvement in conversion rates of up to 62% compared to shoppers using a traditional size chart and a reduction in returns for reasons of fit of up to 77%.<\/p>\n

The post Fits.me Raises Close To $7.6M From SmartCap, Conor, Others<\/a> appeared first on peHUB<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fits.me said it raised almost $7.6 million in a Series A round from existing investor SmartCap and new investors Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Limited and The Entrepreneur\u2019s Fund. The company in May 2009 and August 2010 received seed and early-stage investments of slightly less than $2.67 million from Smartcap and angel investors. PRESS RELEASE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7545,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}