Fit Collective, a London-based Fashion Tech startup, has raised a record €3.4 million in pre-seed funding, reported as the UK’s largest ever round raised by a solo female founder at this stage. The capital will help the company scale its AI-powered sizing and fit platform, aimed at cutting costly returns and waste across the fashion industry.
Record-breaking round for a solo female founder
Founded by Savile Row–trained designer Phoebe Gormley, Fit Collective closed a pre-seed round of €3.4 million (around £3 million), which EU-Startups and investors describe as the largest UK pre-seed raise ever led by a solo female founder. The round includes backing from AlbionVC, SuperSeed, True Global and January Ventures, alongside an Innovate UK Smart Grant.
Investor AlbionVC framed the deal as a bet on both a sizable operational problem in fashion and a rare scale of pre-seed backing for a single female founder. Their investment note highlights the combination of founder experience, strong early traction and an infrastructure-style B2B platform as key reasons for leading the round.
Tackling fashion’s multi-billion fit problem
Fit Collective focuses on one of fashion’s most expensive pain points: incorrect sizing and poor fit, which drive high return rates, overproduction and lost revenue. Industry estimates cited by the company and its investors put the cost of returns and sizing errors at around 230 billion U.S. dollars annually for the global fashion sector.
Instead of relying on basic “find my size” widgets at checkout, Fit Collective plugs into brand workflows much earlier, at the design and production stages. By improving fit before items ever reach the warehouse, the platform aims to cut returns, reduce deadstock and support higher full-price sell-through.
How the AI sizing platform works
The startup’s AI platform ingests data including historical sales, return patterns, garment specifications and fabric behaviour to predict how clothes will fit different bodies before production. According to investor materials, Fit Collective uses this intelligence to recommend pattern adjustments, grading rules and size curves that align with real-world customer bodies rather than legacy size tables.
As a result, brands can redesign blocks, adjust cuts or re-balance size ratios to better match demand, instead of guessing and using heavy markdowns later. Other coverage notes that the platform already works with labels such as Rixo, Ro & Zo and Boden, helping them refine fit and sizing consistency across collections.
Founder background and founder–market fit
Phoebe Gormley is best known for launching Gormley & Gamble, regarded as the first women-only tailoring house on Savile Row, where she spent over 11 years working directly with bespoke patterns and fabric behaviour. That experience gave her access to a rare dataset combining body measurements and garment specifications.
In interviews about Fit Collective, Gormley has argued that most size-recommendation tools struggle because they lack insight into how each garment is actually cut and intended to fit. By starting from garment-level and production-level data instead of only shopper inputs, Fit Collective is designed to reflect whether a piece is meant to be fitted, relaxed or intentionally oversized – factors that are often invisible to traditional sizing tech.
Investors and how the funding will be used
The pre-seed round was led by AlbionVC, with participation from SuperSeed, True Global, January Ventures and several angels from the fashion and e-commerce ecosystem. An additional Innovate UK grant boosts the total to €3.4 million, giving the company significant runway for a pre-seed stage.
According to coverage from investors and startup media, Fit Collective plans to use the capital to expand its engineering and data science teams, deepen integrations with fashion brands and accelerate product development. The company will also invest in onboarding more labels across Europe and beyond, positioning itself as a fit-intelligence layer for mid-sized and larger apparel businesses.
Positioning within fashion and retail tech
The raise comes as fashion retailers face tightening regulations and growing scrutiny on overproduction, returns and environmental impact. Investors note that accurate fit is becoming a board-level KPI, not just a UX detail, because of the cost and sustainability implications of returns and markdowns.
By sitting between design, technical teams and e-commerce, Fit Collective is part of a new wave of B2B tools aimed at rewiring how collections are built and sized. Its positioning as infrastructure – not a consumer app – is a key reason venture firms see potential for scale across multiple brands and geographies.
What this milestone means for female founders
Beyond the product and market story, the funding round functions as a notable signal for female founders in the UK and Europe. Commentators point out that women-led startups still capture only a small share of venture funding, and solo female founders often face even steeper odds at the pre-seed stage.
The closing as described by investors is the largest UK pre-seed round led by a solo female founder, Fit Collective and Phoebe Gormley add a high-profile case to the growing list of women raising significant early-stage capital in deep, operational problem spaces rather than only in consumer-facing niches.
