Kids clothing company aims to be a larger size
ONLINE children’s clothing exchange Bertie & Bean has secured the first £70,000 of a £300,000 seed round to launch its business to the mass market.
The Birmingham Science Park based company – which was an Oxygen Accelerator 2011 start-up – will use the combination of cash and services to launch, gain users and gather data, before raising the remaining £230,000.
Bertie & Bean is aimed at the parents of the 3.86m naught to four year olds in the UK.
Parents who register to use the service will receive two degradable plastic bags that can hold up to two kilograms of clothing that their child has grown out of (typically ten to 15 items). After creating a brief listing on the firm’s website, the parent can also identify a bag of larger garments to receive.
Postage and packaging costs for sending will be covered by Bertie & Bean, while revenue is generated by charging £15 to receive a bag of clothing.
James Tabor, co-founder of Bertie & Bean, said: “There is a highly successful company in the US with a similar online children’s clothing exchange proposition, which has over 250,000 users participating in 1,000 ‘swaps’ per day.
“This company only launched in 2010, so while we are two years behind, realising the vast potential of the UK market is within our grasp.
“The initial £70,000 of investment from private investors is enabling us to produce the ‘swap’ bags, work with a leading logistics company, launch the e-commerce website, and drive user sign-ups through targeted Facebook advertising.”
The first tranche of new investment into Bertie & Bean is coming from four private ‘angel’ investors and Net Lynk Group – a distribution solution provider.
The business plan projections are for the online children’s clothing exchange to have secured 1,000 registered users within the first six weeks.
Dr David Hardman MBE, CEO of Birmingham Science Park said: “Bertie & Bean demonstrates how a start-up – where none of the three founders originate from Birmingham – is making a resounding success of launching and developing its business here.
“The initial investment package Bertie & Bean secured from being accepted onto the Oxygen Accelerator programme, which we run with serial entrepreneur Mark Hales, is what brought the founders to Birmingham in 2011.
“Less than a year after this first Oxygen Accelerator commenced, 31 new employee and director positions have been created from the start-up tech companies.
“This is a model that Birmingham needs to embrace and expand upon to create many more successful tech companies and high value jobs.”
