15 October 2024
Welcome to our October Update!

 

Congratulations to our client, For The Creators, for securing backing from Morgan Stanley – a special moment recently captured on the Nasdaq billboard in Times Square, New York.

A huge achievement for this circular fashion platform on a mission to reinvent maternity and postnatal fashion forever. More details below about this business, founder and campaign.

Our October Update focusses on current opportunities with our founder clients across various sectors and stages.

Please contact the PACP partner highlighted for further details, to request an investor deck and to arrange to meet directly with the founders.


Seed Stage Investment Opportunities

Enduo Sports (view website)

Sector: Fitness, Health and Nutrition

Raise: £250k SEIS eligible

Founder: James Taylor-Medhurst

PACP Partner: greg@pa-capitalpartners.com

A revolution in sports and fitness nutrition: Founded and formulated by pro-athlete an performance coach, James Taylor-Medhurst, Enduo is 100% plant-based sports nutrition, elevating performance and promoting health exactly as nature intended. In contrast, most sports nutrition is unhealthy, full of processed, cheap ingredients and bulking agents that damage performance as well as our gut and immune systems.

Highlights:

  • Industry tested at London South Bank University and a winner of “Most Innovative Food Product” at the UK Business Food Industry Awards.
  • Enduo has been financed and endorsed by James’s personal training clients, a range of medal winning sporting and fitness ambassadors, alongside a wide community of partnerships totalling a collective 250,000 health and fitness fans.
  • D2C and B2B go to market strategies are now underway.
  • Consumers are clearly shifting towards better health, fitness and nutrition whilst demanding greater clarity on ingredients and provenance.

Arco Cyber (view website)

Sector: SaaS/Cybersecurity

Raise: £2m EIS eligible

Founders: Matt Helling, Graham Sawell, Adam Louca

PACP Partner: pippa@pa-capitalpartners.com

Empowers businesses to transform their cybersecurity management through its automated proactive platform: Cybersecurity is the #1 technology investment but most organisations focus on adding an increasing number of tools rather than achieving real protection outcomes. The Arco Cyber platform enables businesses to evolve their cyber security strategy from reactive to proactive, increase resiliency and improve cost-efficiency.

Highlights:

  • Founded by a team with deep experience of cyber security, data analytics, risk management and SaaS sales.
  • Achieved £250k within a few months of launch, on track to do +£400k in Y1, with an active pipeline of +£2m.
  • Addressing a large, rapidly growing market projected to grow at +10% CAGR to c£20BN in 2029.

For The Creators (view website)

Sector: Circular Marketplace

Raise: £250k EIS eligible

Founder: Lyndsay Morgan

PACP Partner: martyn@pa-capitalparners.com

A circular fashion and lifestyle platform empowering women to navigate motherhood: At such a critical chapter, women are left feeling unsupported and uninspired by existing solutions. Addressing a $2.2T market, FTC is anchored in her needs to serve her in a way that suits her best across motherhood milestones from fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum to motherhood.

Highlights:

  • Growing 400% YoY, on track to hit £500k GMV 2024.
  • Strong unit economics with 6:1 LTV ratio and 87% GM.
  • Award-winning sustainability credentials.
  • Backed by Morgan Stanley.

Peace & Pure (view website)

Sector: BeautyTech/Health & Wellness

Raise: £1m EIS eligible

Founder: Alice Wu

PACP Partner: hanim@pa-capitalpartners.com

The world’s only skincare brand dedicated to preventing and correcting mental stress-induced skin aging: The PhytoNeuro Complex, developed by a top dermatologist from Cambridge University and a formulation scientist, addresses stress-induced aging by targeting the skin’s endocrine, nervous and epigenetic systems, making it the most complete solution on the market.

Highlights:

  • Proven market validation, with its first product gaining major press coverage, awards and all 5-star customer reviews, leading to a £175k angel investment to expand its range.
  • Recently secured a $161k distributor order and experiencing strong demand.
  • Positioned at the forefront of the emerging psychodermatology trend, Peace & Pure is featured in 2024 Mintel’s Global Trend report.
  • Backed by a team of industry veterans, ready to scale the brand worldwide.

Calla Lily Clinical Care (view website)

Sector: MedTech

Raise: £1.5m EIS eligible

Founders: Lara Zibners Lohr and Thang Vo-Ta

PACP Partner: sharon@pa-capitalpartners.com

A pioneering women’s health focussed B-Corp that has developed a platform for intravaginal drug delivery: Initial target indications are in fertility and pregnancy, where the company seeks to offer the world’s first drug-device combo product to help prevent miscarriages and for IVF luteal support.

The product itself is a vaginal drug delivery platform that overcomes the flaws in all existing products faced by millions of women around the world. In time, it can be used as a platform to deliver a wide range of existing and upcoming vaginal therapeutics, including infertility, miscarriage, endometriosis, bacterial vaginosis and cervical cancer.

Highlights:

  • Their underlying technology has been named TIME Magazine’s Best Innovation of the Year.
  • Once licensed, the revenue possibilities for this product are huge; conservative estimates sit at £76m within the next 6 years.
  • Having already secured grants to the value of £2.1m, with many more in the pipeline, now is an excellent time to invest in this company.

ChicP (view website)

Sector: Plant-Based Food

Raise: £500k EIS eligible

Founder: Hannah McCollum

PACP Partner: sharon@pa-capitalpartners.com

Plant-based food with a conscience – a versatile product range reducing food waste at source and creating healthier, everyday food: Hannah launched ChicP a few years ago, with a clear commitment to reduce food waste at source and create healthier every-day snacks. As a professional head chef, Hannah has created a range of versatile hummus dips and snack pots from fresh vegetables and pulses that are usually rejected by retailers due to their shape. Her snacks are truly delicious. As well as her own website, ChicP has a significant commercial pipeline.

Highlights:

  • Existing commercial partners are Whole Foods, Selfridges, Planet Organic, Co Op, Ocado and Wimbledon, as well as a long list of wholesale partners and Out Of Home partners.
  • Sales to date have reached over £1.6m. Target revenues are set to hit £20m by 2029, with EBITDA of £5m.
  • Growth will be driven by scaling their local distribution, market penetration and new product lines, as well as new markets like The Netherlands, Germany and the US.
  • Achievements have been recognised by the trade with several awards, including Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, Two Great Taste Awards and a Gold Prize for the Snack Pack in the Innovation Challenge at Lunch.
  • The new Ambient Snackpot range is the first to market offering a highly nutritious natural hummus with 12 months shelf-life.
  • The routes to market for ChicP ongoing are plentiful, ranging from Retail and C Store (Tesco, Sainsburys), Wholesalers, Travel (Virgin Atlantic, Emirates) and Export (Carrefour, Spinneys).

Brityard (view website)

Sector: Retail & Hospitality

Raise: £500k EIS eligible

Founders:  Lara and Robert Gibson-Chant

PACP Partner: sharon@pa-capitalpartners.com

Redefining the ‘Best of British’ on a global scale: A disruptive, membership-based retail and hospitality concept, focussed entirely on representing the best of British brands and talent: Brityard brings micro-communities together under one roof where everything you see, hear, touch, taste, smell and experience comes from the ‘best of breed’ homegrown talent across the UK.

Launched last year with a clear mission to ignite much needed change on our high streets, they are already delivering significant traction from their first store located on London’s Regent Street. This site was their ‘proof of concept’ space and is set to be profitable within its first year of trading, having utilised the space to allow them to trade their retail brands from the first floor, and the basement used as a mix of flexible retail and event space; they really have created a dynamic shared environment.

Highlights:

  • Brands pay a monthly membership for their space across three tiers.
  • After just 6 months of trading, the current site is already exceeding £1m on an annualised basis and is profitable.
  • Their unique business model is multi-faceted with revenue coming through recurring B2B membership fees, sales commission and events. A robust and diverse plan is underpinned by long-term B2B contracts and profitable income streams.
  • Short-term growth is based on opening an additional 3 sites over the next 2 years, taking projected annual revenue and EBITDA to over £15m and £2m respectively.
  • The combination of their innovative B2B-first commercial model combined with attractive rent deals from forward-thinking landlords like The Crown Estate help to drive early profitability.

Early-Growth/Scale Up Investment Opportunities

Studio 10 (view website)

Sector: Beauty and Wellness

Raise: £500k

Founder: Grace Foder

PACP Partner: greg@pa-capitalpartners.com

Changing the face of aging in the beauty sector: Beauty is ageless and over 35’s are the biggest and fastest growth sector but the mainstream, one rule suits all beauty industry approach does not currently reflect their needs.

Studio 10 is changing the face of aging in the Beauty sector with a ‘grown up’ makeup line of innovative products that meet the unique needs of mature skin, empowering women to look and feel their most beautiful and confident.

Highlights:

  • Growing +90% in 2023/24, the business couldn’t meet demand and whilst achieving revenues of over £1.6m, the potential was in excess of £2m.
  • D2C metrics are excellent with 39% repeat purchase and a 4.3% conversion rate as it builds its community and audience.
  • Founded by Grace Foder, a brand expert with over 30 years’ experience having sold her Marcoms business to Omnicom.

PredicAire (view website)

Sector: Age Care/Social Care

Raise: £2m EIS eligible

Founders: Vinay Patel and Ketan Shah

PACP Partner: martyn@pa-capitalpartners.com

Disrupting a $40bn+ Global Care Tech Sector –  A multi-award winning AI powered SaaS product: The Care Tech marketplace is filled with highly fragmented solutions which are costly, inefficient and built on archaic technology. PredicAire is disrupting that marketplace by creating a new category segment delivering a unique AI powered affordable and highly scalable end-to-end solution that is fully comprehensive, focussing on providing better outcomes to all stakeholders.

Highlights:

  • Revenue generating with 60 Care Homes using PredicAire, with another 20 being onboarded in the next 2 weeks.
  • Pilot with a local government operating 10 care homes to commence, which will extend to other local government-operated care homes in the UK.
  • Winner of Technology Provider of the Year – Social Care – Health Investor Awards 2023.
  • Finalist for Tech Innovation of the Year at the National Care Awards 2024.

Florere

Sector: Premium Women’s Fashion

Raise: £350k SEIS/EIS eligible

Founders: Michelle Evatt and Heidi Fielding

PACP Partner: sharon@pa-capitalpartners.com

A highly desirable and successful premium womenswear label packed with personality, creating timeless pieces with standout appeal for occasion dressing and beyond: Perfectly positioned within the bridging brands space, the label occupies a clear gap that exists now due to the recent churn of the many once established occasion brands losing prominence or having been acquired.

The founding team are highly accomplished industry veterans, and have excelled at inspiring teams to deliver standout, market-leading collections with strategic, innovative and commercial thinking.

Highlights:

  • Revenues at over £3m in their first 18 months of trading.
  • Currently trading on Reiss.com, Next.com, David Jones and JL.com and 10 stores.
  • Own website launch planned for 2025.
  • Significant large scale commercial partnerships in the pipelines.
  • Revenue targets set to reach £26m plus in the next 3 years.

Blake Mill (view website)

Sector: Menswear Fashion

Raise: £1.7m (£800k committed)

Founders: Ken Price and Steve French

PACP Partner: sharon@pa-capitalpartners.com

A premium menswear brand, offering totally unique shirts and tops for the confident affluent man: Trading currently via their own website and wholesale partners they are carving out a very healthy market segment and set to become a big player in the global clothing industry.

The products and concept are a blend of artistic distinctive designs, creative and unique, the fabric is of high quality, the cut is described as ‘truly perfect’ and the customer service experience is outstanding. Blake Mill is uniquely placed to take a significant share of the premium mens shirt market globally and as their product offering expands beyond shirts, the potential gets even bigger.

Highlights:

  • Revenues have hit £1.1m this year and on track to break even in 2025 with sales of £2.8m in 2025 and building to £25.4m by 2028.
  • Excellent returns rate of 11% vs market averages of 30%.
  • Current email database is 45k, set to grow significantly in the near future.
  • Launching at johnlewis.com this month and in stores next year.
  • Category extensions within the existing menswear offer planned for 2025.
  • Global plans are to target US and Europe from this year, planning for a mix of at least 10% from overseas orders initially.

Amanda Caroline (view website)

Sector: Beauty and Wellness

Raise: £1.5m (awaiting EIS status confirmation)

Founder: Amanda Caroline Cronin

PACP Partner: martyn@pa-capitalpartners.com

Innovative, luxury beauty, wellness and longevity brand focussed on the maturing woman: A high performance skincare product line with innovative new ingredients and textures, formulas designed to be more absorbent and therefore more effective.

A one stop clinic offering the 360 degree, all-encompassing secret to feeling and looking optimum for longer through Dr Led beauty wellness and aesthetics.

Highlights:

  • The mature woman has been overlooked in regards to skincare and skincare formulas have not achieved the desired results on hydration, sun damage and signs of aging.
  • The brand offers a safe haven for mature women to feel welcome, share in safety, feel a higher sense of self value, guided and educated in terms of longevity and optimum aging; a one stop wraparound of aesthetic, beauty and wellness solutions including reverse aging treatments.
  • Innovative and high performing products designed to be highly absorbent, their unique skincare formulations are designed to address the issues the mature woman is facing, formulated and manufactured in England.
  • Encouraging women to embrace every stage of the aging process with grace and assurance. More than skincare, Amanda Caroline is a community that celebrates self-value and well-being.

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