We have some very exciting news from Solely Original HQ this week… we are crowdfunding!
We’re so excited to have launched our campaign on Crowdcube and after a busy final week preparing to reveal the pitch we caught up with Solely Original’s founding director Iris to find out all about it…
Tell us more about your crowdfunding campaign…
When we initially started thinking about raising finance to fund our next stage of growth, we thought about going down the traditional routes of approaching a bank or Venture Capitalists, in fact we even got to the final stages of agreeing on terms with a well-respected VC firm, but decided it wasn’t for us.
At Solely Original we are all about empowering women and challenging the norm and ultimately we wanted to give our customers and everyone who has supported our brand so far the opportunity to have a slice of the action and decided to crowdfund instead.
So how does crowdfunding actually work?
We have chosen to work with leading platform CrowdCube to host our campaign which allows “the crowd” to invest as little as £10 for an equity share in the business. The beauty of crowdfunding is that it is really simple and an easy way for people to dip their toes into the investment world and have the opportunity to be part of something really exciting.
What do you hope to do if (when!) the campaign is successful?
This round of investment is really a chance for us to put some money into marketing the business. So far we have grown quite organically, which has allowed us to focus on getting the production and operational side of the business right. Now we are at a really exciting stage where we have built an amazing product out of passion and we are ready to put all of our efforts into marketing.
What other things do you have planned for Solely Original?
We are looking to build on our current technology and make shoe shopping experience much more fun and easy. So we are currently testing out a photogrammetry technology where we can integrate the shoe designing platform with a foot scanning software where we can turn your foot video into a 3D scan so we can use the data to make your beautiful made to measure shoes!
How can we get involved?
We would love your support in reaching our goal whether you would like to invest £10 or £50,000, or simply by sharing our message on social media and spreading the word.
For more information visit: WWW.CROWDCUBE.COM/SOLELYORIGINAL or email INFO@SOLELYORIGINAL.COM to request a business plan.
PLEASE #INVESTAWARE. CAPITAL AT RISK.