{"id":160069,"date":"2018-05-25T10:30:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T10:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/interview-heist-studios-ceo-toby-darbyshire-on-raising-finance-and-revolutionising-underwear\/"},"modified":"2021-08-12T13:52:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T13:52:55","slug":"interview-heist-studios-ceo-toby-darbyshire-on-raising-finance-and-revolutionising-underwear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/interview-heist-studios-ceo-toby-darbyshire-on-raising-finance-and-revolutionising-underwear\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Heist Studios CEO Toby Darbyshire on raising finance and revolutionising underwear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disruptive hosiery and tights brand Heist Studios<\/a> has just completed a second round of seed fundraising<\/strong> with Firstminute Capital, JamJar, Pembroke VCT and other existing investors injecting a further $4.4m into the business. Heist was also recently named as one of the innovative businesses<\/a> to have received backing from Dame Natalie Massenet and Nick Brown's new venture capital fund<\/strong> \u2013 Imaginary Ventures \u2013 which was one of five investors to plough $2.6m into the fast-growing brand last autumn.<\/p>\n

Having raised $8.1m so far through two angel investment and two seed funding rounds, the brand is ready to revolutionise women's underwear in general having already achieved great success with its luxury, seamless tights. CEO Toby Darbyshire talks to The Industry<\/em><\/strong> about setting up the brand, the power of customer feedback and his plans for the future.<\/p>\n

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Before we get on to Heist, can you tell us a bit about your background, before you started Heist and how you came to set it up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started my career at management consulting firm Bain & Company, later moving on to co-found home energy provider Engensa, with the aim of delivering solar panels to the masses.<\/p>\n

After exiting Engensa to Chinese renewables company Hanergy, which later licensed Engensa to IKEA as part of their in-store solar offering, I found myself looking for other consumer sectors in need of disruption, and co-founded Heist in 2015.<\/p>\n

When the business was started in 2015, what was the niche you identified and how did you go about developing and making the product?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heist was started by myself and co-founder Edzard van der Wyck as, during conversations with our partners and friends, we were amazed at how much airtime underwear garments got, for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

It was clear that existing underwear brands design for aesthetics and sideline product functionality, because they are designing for what women look like rather than the lives they lead (e.g. Victoria\u2019s Secret). Unlike sportswear where superbrands invest heavily in product innovation for athletic disciplines, underwear \u2013 worn all day every day by women for their entire lives \u2013 is neglected. We saw an opportunity to disrupt this $110 billion industry and started by reimagining the humble pair of tights to prove we could innovate.<\/p>\n

We then, not knowing a huge amount about underwear, talked to our friends and worked with a group of 67 women who helped us understand how we could reimagine the much-overlooked pair of tights, as the start of our mission.<\/p>\n

What is it that makes your hosiery so different from the other products on the market? <\/strong><\/p>\n

We redesigned tights by understanding what women did \u2013 and didn\u2019t \u2013 want from their hosiery, to create a laundry list of issues faced by tights wearers to work from. Then, we asked three questions to radically change the design:<\/p>\n