Venture Capital News: FINERY Lands $5M Seed Financing
2018-01-16
NEW YORK, NY, FINERY, the world's first automated online wardrobe platform with predictive analytics for styling and shopping, announced today a $5 million seed round.
The round was led by NEA with participation from Farfetch, BBG Ventures, Adrian Cheng through C Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Halogen Ventures, RetailMeNot Founder & CEO Cotter Cunningham and TheSkimm founders, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg. The company is founded by CEO Whitney Casey (former CNN anchor and best-selling author) and Brooklyn Decker (actor and model) acts as the company's Chief Design Officer.
Funds from this round will be used to grow the company's team of top developers and data scientists. With a proprietary, automated backend process, FINERY integrates seamlessly with a user's shopping history and purchase patterns, optimizing the second most valuable room in the home - a woman's closet. Since launch, the platform has garnered more than 100,000 users.
FINERY is taking a technology-first approach to fashion, retail and a woman's personal wardrobe, a space typically dominated solely by e-commerce. The consumer-facing platform allows women to shop across any brand or retailer and see all their purchases instantly in one place. From here, FINERY helps generate styled looks from the items users have already purchased and is building highly personalized shopping recommendation processes based on what each user already owns, reducing redundancies. FINERY's proprietary technology acts as a consumer advocate, empowering women to own their information on wardrobe spending and use it to their benefit by making more informed decisions about how they budget their time and money.
To further help women shop smarter, the platform's management technology detects recent purchases, providing alerts when an item's return window is about to expire, while also monitoring for potential price adjustments. In addition, the platform notifies users when items they have been looking to buy go on sale.
"With thoughtful investors from both tech and fashion by our side, we're committed to building out the most powerful set of software tools that are easy to use and invaluable to savvy female consumers - the kind of technology that makes women smarter about how they spend their money, style themselves and shop everyday," said Whitney Casey, co-founder and CEO of FINERY. "We are the first consumer facing, apparel based data company to capture and understand these deep insights and then seamlessly put that powerful information directly to work for the women that data belongs to. We don't want to sell women more 'stuff,' we want to help them to wear the things they already own, potentially monetize their closets and then give them tools to shop more strategically."
"The team at FINERY is creating a completely connected closet platform, closing the retail loop from purchase to recommerce," said Tony Florence, general partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). "They've built a powerful algorithm that combines inventory management, styling, purchasing and accessibility to help an individual manage her wardrobe. The technology is unique in that it's the first time we can understand the entire lifecycle of a wardrobe, from purchase, to usage, to the day it either gets retired or resold."
This round of investors joins FINERY's founding angel investors, including Brooklyn Decker and Andy Roddick, former professional tennis player; Miroslava Duma, founder and CEO of Fashion Tech Lab; and Nasiba Adilova, co-founder of The Tot.
Early adopters of the platform include Lauren Santo Domingo, Vogue contributing editor and co-founder of Moda Operandi; Christine Centenera, Vogue fashion director; Bobbie Thomas, style editor of NBC's Today Show; Rachel Zoe, designer and celebrity stylist; Molly Sims, model and author; Kelly Wearstler, interior designer; Leandra Medine, founder of Man Repeller; Danielle Bernstein, founder of We Wore What; and Emily Schuman, founder of Cupcakes and Cashmere.
For more information on FINERY's Wardrobe Operating System, please visit www.finery.com.
About FINERY
FINERY is the world's first Wardrobe Operating System. Their proprietary technology automates your wardrobe by linking to 10,000 plus brands and stores to instantly populate an online wardrobe with purchases, past, present and future. The platform then organizes, curates by color and sources styled looks for each item or helps users create their own - all at no cost to the user. Additionally, the universal wishlist feature helps the woman on the go capture all their online favorites from any site, in one place. From putting-on to purchasing, managing to monetizing, FINERY makes it effortless to sync up life and wardrobe. Because just as life should, The Wardrobe Operating System is always updating.
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