Thread.com secures £4m investment

Thread, the personal styling and shopping service for men, has raised a further £4m in an investment round led by growth investor Beringea and its existing investor Balderton Capital.

The latest investment takes total funds raised by Thread, which uses a mixture of algorithms and humans to help match men to the right clothes for them, to around £11m. Last August it secured £5.7m in an investment round led by Balderton.

Co-founder Keiran O'Neill told TechCrunch that the company was keen to invest in more data scientists, engineers and additional staff. "We’re also focusing on growing our list of brand partners. We raised this round to be able to do both those things while continuing to grow at the same pace as we have been recently,” he said.

The service works by inviting men to register, take a style questionnaire and, if they wish to, add photos. A (human) personal stylist, based at Thread's Whitechapel, London office, will then make recommendations to the customer about what would suit them best. The stylists "teach" the algorithm to make the best recommendations from more than 250,000 items.

If customers buy the items, they are shipped by Thread who shares revenue with its partner brands. Brands available on the site include APC, Nike, Levi's, Topman, Marks & Spencer and Richard James. It aims to offer a wide range of options from high end to high street and last year recruited former menswear director of Selfridges Terry Betts to build the brand line-up.

When the service launched in 2012 it initially offered womenswear as well but this was dropped after six months so the company could focus on the men's market, however its website is promising a women's service in the future.