Fashion Tech: With a total endowment of EUR 5.64 million, the Styleit project launched by CDP Venture Capital has a three-year time horizon. It envisages the involvement of about ten start-ups annually: subjects that can access an acceleration path aimed at consolidating their entry into the market of reference.
Selected start-ups will receive a pre-seed investment of about 113,000 euros and will be able to participate in subsequent post-acceleration financing of up to 200,000 euros. Globally, investments in the fashion tech segment have increased by 18% per year, from five billion dollars in 2016 to 41.7 billion in 2022, with a growth trend forecast to double by 2030.
In Italy, the segment is developing strongly, as shown by the 46 investments made in 2020, totalling 70 million euros and an average investment per transaction of around 1.5 million. Metaverse and Digital Fashion are the two verticals most present in recent fundraising operations.
The initiative is aimed at start-ups with an established team and a functioning business prototype that have developed innovative products or services for the fashion, luxury and lifestyle market, with particular reference to enabling technologies for the sectors of environmental sustainability applied to production processes and the distribution chain, artificial intelligence, upcycling, metaverse, e-commerce, blockchain and mixed or augmented reality.
The three-month acceleration program will help start-ups grow with training, workshops and masterclasses with mentors and experts in the fashion market, aimed at providing quality certification of the offer and business models for go-to-market. Interested start-ups have the opportunity to apply until 19 June 2023 at www.styleitaccelerator.it. The call is aimed at international start-ups that intend to open a registered office in Italy.
The protagonists of the project
The Styleit project sees the participation of Startupbootcamp (Europe’s leading accelerator and one of the world’s leading accelerators, which has already launched the Fin+Tech and WeSportUp accelerators with CDP Venture Capital) and the innovation factory GELLIFY, which is renewing its collaboration with CDP Venture Capital almost two years after the launch of the Forward Factory accelerator.
The initiative also sees the involvement of the Azimut Digitech Fund, Azimut Libera Impresa SGR, which confirms its support for the seed innovation ecosystem for the birth of new innovative enterprises, the advisory firm FNDX, which will guarantee its contribution to the selection and evaluation of start-ups to be invested in, the Polimoda fashion school in Florence, as an educational partner, and the Open Seed network of business angels, also based in the Tuscan capital.
The Accelerator also benefits from the support of Corporate Partners Ratti Spa Società Benefit, a leader in the production of printed fabrics in the Como district since 1945, the International Footwear Exhibition MICAM Milano, and the Fondazione del Tessile Italiano, which now has more than 100 members dedicated to textiles in Italy and aims to develop research activities, documentation and design in the textile and upholstery sector, also with a focus on related technical-scientific research developments, supporting the training and constant updating of personnel in the sector, as well as supporting and promoting studies and in-depth research into sustainable business models.
The promoters of StyleIT also include the local partner Manifattura Tabacchi, which represents one of the most significant urban regeneration plans in Italy and the third city headquarters of Polimoda, which will host the acceleration program in its spaces in Florence.
