Blake Mill

Idea

Introduction

Blake Mill delivers community inspired fashion.

We are a men’s fashion brand focused on unique design. We create all sorts of designs – bold and brash to subdued and subtle. Some will appeal to a large community, others to a specific niche. Before we launch any new Blake Mill product though, we ask “Do you like this?”. The result is fashion that our customers become engaged with – garments into which they have invested time and energy helping to choose.

*Revenue information from management accounts

Substantial accomplishments to date

2015

· Steve and Ross launched the original business as a wholesale shirt manufacturer in a 19th century converted textile mill in Bollington, UK learning everything there is to know about making excellent quality shirts.

2017

· Ken joined Ross and Steve to re-engineer the business from wholesale to direct to consumer

· Outsourced production to manufactures after careful process of selection by Blake Mill management

· By mid-year Ken and Steve had jointly splashed out over £1 million to help finance development of the business

2018

· Our online store, www.blakemill.co.uk was launched in April

· Monthly online revenues* climbed from under £2,000 to over £58,000 from Aug. to Nov. 2018

2019

· Moved head office to central Manchester from Bollington

· Outsourced all warehousing and fulfilment

2020

· Launched short sleeve shirt range

· Set up dedicated customer support function

· Began development of statistical analysis tools for inventory and advertising management optimisation

2021

· Began community collaborations for new design selections

· Launched button down collar range

2022

· Launched Lux Jersey range & Limited edition range of long and short sleeve shirts

· Restarted sales to the US and select EU countries

· Hired UK Lead Buyer

· Engaged over 35 influencers with an aggregate of over 15 million followers since February

· Began formal registration of designs with UK IP Office

Monetisation strategy

We currently generate revenue from customers buying from our website www.blakemill.co.uk. We have numerous other Blake Mill URL’s that point to our UK website including www.blakemill.com and www.blakemill.de. The majority of our customers are in the UK. We plan to expand sales into the US and continental Europe via our online platform in 2023.

A small portion of our revenue is generated by a few UK retailers who pay for our product in advance of receiving it. By expanding our retail network we will strive to enhance revenue and brand recognition.

All of our marketing is online including paid advertising, influencer marketing and email marketing. Our average customer lifetime value is £143 from Apr 2021 to Mar 2022. This is almost 3.5 times our customer acquisition cost from 2020 to 2021 of £42 per unit.

Use of proceeds

Your investment will help us to fuel 4 drivers of growth:

1) Marketing: We plan to further invest in impactful digital assets (video and imagery) to broadcast across a growing (and changing) landscape of paid & social channels.

2) Product Range Expansion: This funding will help us expand our product range across the wardrobe, leveraging broader market appeal and increased incentive for repeat customers in order to rapidly grow revenue.

3) Geographical Expansion: Leveraging efficient global distribution capability from our UK facilities we will target logistics and marketing spend to the US and Europe.

4) Technology/R&D: Using existing technologies we have begun digitally prototyping new garments. We plan to uniquely label every garment facilitating traceability of raw materials used and establishing a base for a resale market for our proprietary designs. Technology will facilitate expansion of our community driven design process with anticipated projects in 3D printed garment components and in Web 3.0.