Online fashion brand in fundraising to capitalise on growth opportunities
Cheshire online fashion brand Sosandar has raised around £5.27m through a placing and subscription, and a further £500,000 through the PrimaryBid platform. The placing and the PrimaryBid offer were substantially oversubscribed.
The company, founded by two former fashion journalists, Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, said it will use the proceeds to capitalise on the growth opportunity with its third party retail partners where, currently, on average, only nine per cent of Sosandar’s total product range is available for sale.
Its third party partners comprise John Lewis, Next, and Marks & Spencer.
The company said focus will be on investing in stock from the autumn/winter 2021 season onwards, including increasing both the number of styles and the number of units per style to be sold through its third party partner websites.
Proceeds will also provide additional funding to engage with other third party partners in the UK and internationally, and will provide additional working capital and further balance sheet flexibility to support other incremental growth initiatives.
The placing will raise approximately £5.24m, before expenses. In addition to this, one of the company’s directors subscribed for 150,000 new ordinary shares, raising a further £30,000 of gross proceeds for the company, making a total of £5.27m.
In addition to the placing and subscription, there was an offer of 2,500,000 new ordinary shares to raise further gross proceeds of up to £0.50m, to be made by the company via the PrimaryBid platform offered by PrimaryBid Limited, to provide retail investors with an opportunity to participate in the fundraise.
As reported in the year end trading update, the company delivered another strong performance in its fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, recording revenue of £3. 94m – a 63% increase over the corresponding period in the prior year.
Customer activity stepped up each month during the quarter, with record revenue delivered in March 2021, up 66% compared with January 2021 and 163% up on the lockdown-impacted March 2020.
This momentum has continued into the first few weeks of the company’s new financial year and is in line with the board’s expectations. The board said it reiterates its confidence in the company’s prospects.
