Founded in 2021 by entrepreneur Cally Russell alongside co-founders Jamie Sutherland and Hilde Frydness, a young startup out of Edinburg called Unfolded has raised £1.2 million in a pre-seed funding round to embark on a mission to eliminate waste from the fashion industry.
The pre-seed round was led by Techstart Ventures with Solid Bond, FJ Labs, Sweetspot Capital and Pareto Holdings participating, alongside a number of unnamed angel investors.
Unfolded posits that 30% of new clothes made every year never get sold or worn, creating a mountain of unnecessary waste in terms of resources, energy and time.
The startup is working on a 'sustainable and ethical clothes' production platform to create a new way for people to shop sustainable yet affordable items, only producing fashion in a special factory after orders have been placed.
In the last 12 months the company says it already attracted a community of 10,000+ customers in the UK for its 'zero-waste' model, which it says also guarantees higher wages for the fashion industry workers involved.
Cally Russell, co-founder and CEO of Unfolded, said: “Fashion is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet and the second biggest polluting. We’ve spent years trying to work with retailers to drive change in the industry to make it less wasteful and better for the planet, sadly though many of them don’t want to change. Our experience to date showed us that to create real impact we need to take matters into our own hands and tackle the issue at source, thus Unfolded was born."
Russell was also the founder of the Mallzee shopping app, which was tipped as a potential breakaway success but has since folded. Him and the other co-founders of Unfolded were also the brains behind Lost Stock, an impactful retail business.
Featured image credit: Francois Le Nguyen / Unsplash
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