List of the 600 largest Fashion Venture Capital Investors [2024]

List of 5 large fashion venture capital investors

In 2021, the fashion industry had an estimated revenue between $1.7 trillion and $2.5 trillion and is, therefore, one of the most important industries in our economy. This article highlights five venture capital investors who are especially active in the sector.

1. FJ Labs (USA)

FJ Labs focuses on marketplaces and network effect businesses. With 1259 investments and 81 exits, the company has a wide-ranging portfolio. One of the companies the fund has backed is Inkbox. Inkbox is a Canadian online marketplace from Toronto that sells semi-permanent tattoos and accessories.

Update 2024: In 2023, the venture capital company invested in AI Clearing, a company that specializes in construction progress monitoring through their cutting-edge SaaS platform, AI Surveyor Engine. This tool uses machine learning to simplify digital field construction progress tracking.

2. Lerer Hippeau (USA)

Lerer Hippeau is a VC business focusing on innovative startups in various sectors, such as security, e-commerce, entertainment, fintech, healthcare, proptech, marketing, and logistics. A promising company in the fashion sector is CUUP, which makes bras for every size. Another company is Parade, which focuses on designing sustainable and inclusive underwear.

3. Shasta Ventures (USA)

Founded in 2004, Shasta Ventures invest early-stage stage companies in various sectors in the technology industry. One of their investments in the fashion industry was to back the activewear company Stawhich, which started selling socks in 2009 and has expanded to various other clothing.

4. G+J Digital Ventures (Germany)

G+J Digital Ventures was founded in 2015 and is a venture capital firm that thrives off the expertise of Gruner + Jahr and the Bertelsmann Group. The company is mostly interested in the food, living, family, and fashion market, additionally they are investing in AdTech and AdSales. A well-known portfolio company is Brigitte, a German magazine targeted at women.

5. Spring Invest (France)

Spring Invest is a venture capital company that supports seed and series A projects with capital ranging from €500k to €3m. Additionally, they offer operational support and guidance for the startups. One of these startups is Smala, a second-hand platform that sells children’s clothes. In January, the Parisian customer data segmentation startup Mediarithmics announced a €7M funding round amongst the investors: Spring Invest.

Picture Source: piotr szulawski

Included information in our list

Our keyword analysis-based list includes the following general columns:

• Name of the VC fund
• Country of origin
• URL
• E-mail (general)
• Investment focus (if data available)
• Corporate VC (yes/no)

The following columns are based on the keyword crawler, which is a Python-based, in-house developed tool that crawls every page for at least 45 seconds to find the respective keywords.

• total_frequency (e.g.: 1536) – total counted occurrences of keywords on the VC website
• average_keyword_rate (e.g. 0.02) – average rate of keyword occurrences per subpage in relation with total number of words
• most_common_keyword (e.g. „fashion“) – keyword that was counted the most often on respective VC website
• most_common_keyword_frequency (e.g. 152) – number of times the most common keyword was counted
• sub_url_highest_rate (e.g. http://rightsidecapital.com/portfolio/#active2021) – sub url with the highest number of found keywords
• highest_rate (e.g. 0.08) – highest keyword rate per subpage
• frequency_per_keyword: {‘fashion’: 116, ‘clothing’: 18, ‘clothes’: 1} – dictionary of number of keyword occurrences per keyword

Picture Source: Toa Heftiba

Results of our keyword analysis

In the next paragraph, we are focusing on insights derived from our keyword research, which was based on our list of the 2,500 largest VC investors worldwide.

Percentage of VC funds that invest in start-ups in the fashion sector

Our keyword crawler analyzed more than 2,500 venture capital funds regarding fashion investment keywords. We found out that 55.2 % of the global VC funds mention fashion.

Focus on fashion and clothing

This bar chart shows the most important keywords from our keyword search, however most companies use the keyword fashion to describe their vc company focus. Additionally, the terms clothing and clothes are used.

Countries of fashion startup investors

The most common country for fashion startup investors are the USA. For instance, the previously presented investor Lerer Hippeau is located in NYC, New York. Countries with also lots of these investors are Germany, the UK, France, and Switzerland. These countries are known for their strong fashion industries and have a long history of producing high-quality clothing and accessories. In addition, many of these countries are home to world-renowned fashion designers and brands, which makes them attractive locations for fashion startups looking to make a name for themselves. As a result, these countries are home to many successful fashion startups and are popular destinations for investors looking to invest in the fashion sector.