Welcome to This is Unfolded and thanks for coming to check us out, we assume you might just have seen our CEO Cally take on The Dragons!

First off we want to share a little background with you - what you saw tonight was filmed back in June 2022 and a lot has happened with Unfolded since then… and we mean a lot!

Also, the clip you saw tonight was created from over 2 hours of continuous filming with non-stop questions! Yup, 2 hours with no breaks...

So, what you end up with are some things potentially taken out of context with Cally under some pretty intense pressure… and by the end he tells us he was pretty desperate for a pee and a sit down!

So why didn’t we do a deal? Did we just do this for the exposure?

Before we went into the Den we had already raised £600k from amazing investors at the same valuation offered to The Dragons, which is a price we felt was very fair considering the stage of the business, the team behind it, the potential for global change and how the investment market was in 2022. To take a Dragons offer at a greatly reduced valuation would have been unfair to these original investors. We did though drop the price in The Den to try and make a deal happen.

Our belief in our valuation has been proven by the fact that since filming we’ve gone on to raise a further £600k from leading early stage investors in the UK and US.

Going into The Den we really wanted to get certain Dragons to join the Unfolded mission to remove the waste in fashion as we thought they could bring something unique and help us accelerate our mission. But we couldn’t do that at any price - if we did it would mean we couldn’t raise more money in the future to continue growing.

With a goal as big as ours we will likely need further investment to achieve it…

Are you clothes actually any good?

They’re totally fantastic… but don't just take our word for it!

We have an industry-leading Trustpilot rating from hundreds of shoppers, with an overall score of 4.9 🌟out of 5.

Our repeat purchase rate from customers is 2x the industry standard and to add to that, our return rate is much much lower than traditional brands.

Due to the last-minute nature of our appearance on Dragons Den and because our production model means we only have limited stock of items we produce, the clothes shown on the show were a mix of samples and pieces from past collections. The clothes shown to the Dragons were actually from four different collections and mostly preproduction samples!

Don’t just take our word for it though - check out our rating on Trustpilot from hundreds of shoppers.

Sustainability and Our Mission

We’re not perfect, and we would never claim to be, but we’re working super hard every day to be as good to the planet, our workers and our community as we can be!

For example sometimes we still have to make a little bit more of an item than we have originally sold but when this happens we keep it on sale for longer, or donate any leftover pieces to organisations that can use them to help women in need.

We’ve never sent a new item to landfill or any other waste processing facility.

Whilst some people believe that the only sustainable fashion solution is to ensure no new production and move everyone to second hand or rental models, this isn’t something we believe is feasible. There are several reasons for this, including the huge number of people that rely on the fashion industry for employment in developing countries, often without the same safety nets we have for workers in the UK.

Instead, we need to remove the waste and overproduction from this industry and build a new model for everyone.

For example, if all brands used the Unfolded model we estimate it would reduce global carbon emissions around 1.5%... Which would go a long long way to helping the planet!

'You’re Not Profitable' - So how can you value the business so highly?

You’re right - we’re not profitable yet, and we’ve never expected to be at this point and never said we were in The Den - we always said our collections were Net profitable - so before staffing and central overhead costs!

Despite what some Dragons may want you to believe, most early stage fast growth companies lose money in the early years as they build and market their products.

It’s usually the reason why they raise investment… 

It’s pretty much impossible to judge an early stage business on just its profitability. For that exact reason, that’s why most people and investors don’t - instead they look at key metrics such as growth rate, customer feedback and what the business can become in the future.

Our Last Appearance And Business

Cally has been on Dragons’ Den before. It was all the way back in 2015 with a business called, Mallzee.

Mallzee was a shopping app that was a bit like 'Tinder for Clothes.' The business used data generated from 1.5m users to help big retailers to make better decisions about the products they stocked.

We still think Mallzee was a great idea, but we weren’t able to change how these companies bought stock properly. It was too ingrained in their business models, and built on the belief that waste was acceptable. We tried everything we could to drive change here but when the pandemic hit there simply wasn’t a way for us to survive if we kept doing this - these companies just took too long to change!  

As the pandemic took hold we started to hear about big brands and retailers cancelling orders for new clothes and refusing to pay manufacturers, leaving workers in textile manufacturing countries facing significant hardship!

So we decided to do something about this and launched Lost Stock, which sold mystery boxes of the clothes that had been cancelled by big retailers. We used the money made to support garment workers and their families in Bangladesh. We sold over 125,000 boxes in 7 months across 10 countries and supported over 113,000 people through Sajida, an organisation providing essential support, healthcare and supplies to garment workers and families. The support we provided was in direct financial aid to workers.

The Lost Stock model wasn’t a perfect solution - not everyone will like what they get in a mystery box and due to the consequences of the ongoing pandemic it was super difficult to get orders to people quickly! While the majority of people loved it, a few quite vocally did not - and that still makes us pretty sad as it was designed to just do some good at a dark time in the world!

Lost Stock was always a short term solution to a pressing problem so in 2021 we closed Mallzee and Lost Stock, paid off all our suppliers fully and moved our staff across to Unfolded. Despite our best efforts we couldn’t move the investors we had in Mallzee across to the new business and as such they lost their investments, although most benefited from 60% tax relief on this loss through the EIS investment scheme.

Too Good to Be True

Well - our customers tell us we’re pretty bloody brilliant - but we know we’re not perfect, so here are just some of the things we’re working to improve just now:

On average, it takes around 6 weeks for your order to arrive, but at times it can take longer, so that’s something we’re working hard to address.

Our fault rate on clothes is lower than most brands at 0.5% - but to us this is still too high.

We know we can always work on improving the communication of each stage of clothes production to our customers, and we’re continuing to build resources and information on our website and in emails and ongoing communication.

Our time with the Dragons

Overall we’re really proud of our Dragons Den experience, we raised huge awareness of the awful impact of fast fashion on the planet, got to show off our amazing customers on national TV and received multiple offers from the Dragons.

And not many people get 3 rival offers in The Den...

But we do still have some regrets and wish the producers would have left more in the segment about the positive impact we’re creating in the world by removing the waste from clothes or about our amazing customers!

You've read this far and now we would love it if you would join us and over 12,000 women changing the world with our clothes!

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