Solo female founder Phoebe Gormley has just secured the UK’s largest pre-seed funding round, stepping up to solve one of fashion’s biggest operational hurdles: fit.
Her company, Fit Collective, closed a £3 million raise to tackle the industry’s $230 billion annual loss caused by returns and sizing errors. AlbionVC, SuperSeed, True Global, January Ventures, and an Innovate UK Smart Grant are backing Gormley’s mission to redefine how fashion brands approach fit.
Gormley’s journey to founding Fit Collective stems from years spent in craftsmanship rather than coding. As the first woman to open a women’s tailoring house on Savile Row, she mastered bespoke design for professionals, brides, and executives.
Those experiences sharpened her obsession with detail and precision, inspiring her to bridge traditional tailoring with modern technology. Fit Collective merges these worlds, using predictive analytics to help brands produce clothing that fits real people. The company enables real-time adjustments to size specifications and product designs by integrating advanced machine learning algorithms with a comprehensive dataset of historical returns and fit-related feedback.
Using an AI-driven platform, the company analyses returns data, fabric behaviour, and sales patterns before garments even go into production. The technology also incorporates fabric memory and stretch properties, further refining prediction accuracy and ensuring sustainable fit solutions.
Unlike True Fit, Bold Metrics and 3DLook, Fit Collective addresses problems at their source. The platform combines deep garment expertise with predictive AI to flag fit issues before production, allowing brands to design smarter and waste less.
With fresh investment secured, Gormley is expanding her team and scaling partnerships with global labels that share a vision for sustainability and circular fashion. Looking ahead, Fit Collective plans to enter the U.S. and Asian markets, where fashion e-commerce is booming.
“Fit is one of the fashion industry’s biggest blind spots, and returns are now a board-level issue costing the industry billions. We’re backing Fit Collective because they’re tackling this challenge at its roots. The team is building the kind of intelligence layer we believe will power the next wave of operational transformation in retail,” added Valerie Aelbrecht, Investment Manager at AlbionVC.
