What’s Next For Armoire — the ‘Closet of the Future’

Last week, we announced a new round of funding, strongly backed by female investors, to continue providing every woman with the clothes her demanding and changing life requires.

It’s been two years since the launch of Armoire, a fashion rental service for the busy woman, and I am proud to announce we raised $3M in a new round of funding as featured most recently in GeekWire. The root of the word Armoire and Armor is the same. As warriors, women should be able to choose the armor that best fits the moment — and Armoire gives her a practical way to do just that.

Armoire was built to be every woman’s dream closet: an endless number of items that she doesn’t have to purchase, dry clean or store — items that are recommended to her according to a deep understanding of her personal preferences for clothing that makes her feel powerful and comfortable.

 So how does it work? Using MIT born algorithms (our first three months were in MIT’s Delta V accelerator program), Armoire strives to understand a woman’s preferences for clothing and fit, and keep up with her as those preferences change with life circumstances, weather, and trends. Every time a member logs in, she is presented a fresh selection of pieces to choose from. She can then opt to receive the item today, save for later, or reject — teaching the algorithm with each response.

We have been thrilled with the market’s response to the product. Though our company has customers across the country, Seattle continues to be our largest market. As a community in Seattle, we care a lot about sustainability. Traditional apparel — the second most polluting industry on earth — is at odds with this. Seattle women have embraced the opportunity to share clothing, even sometimes referencing the ability to ‘pay forward’ a powerful blazer (like the one Senator Cantwell rented below) or dress — to service the next amazing member.

Our new round of funding will allow us to continue to grow and service our mission of making an impractical closet accessible to practical women. We plan to invest in further developing the algorithms that enable our predictive capabilities by doubling the size of our tech team in the next 12 months. We will invest in a full fledged maternity and nursing line to make good on our promise of servicing women at every step. Lastly, we will cultivate relationships with an increasing number of values-aligned apparel suppliers, including women owned and sustainably focused producers.

The Armoire team is currently 26 people, 23 of whom are women. We run end to end operations, including our warehouse of over 15k apparel items, out of the Riveter in Capitol Hill. I am so grateful to our members and investors for the chance to create a different kind of working environment for my incredible teammates, one built by and for women. This includes everyone from stylists, to technologists, to operations specialists — who pick and pack hundreds of curated packages every day.

This round was supported by a number of incredible local investors, as well as investors nationwide. Notably, retail veterans Darrell Cavens of Zulily and Vijay Talwar, president of Foot Locker digital and former CEO of Blue Nile, led the charge.

We are also incredibly proud and grateful to have a number of female leaders as investors, all of whom began as customers before deciding to become involved as investors including Sheila Gulati of Tola Capitol, Dawn Lepore formerly of drugstore.com, Jesse Draper of Halogen VC, Angela Taylor of Efeste Winery, Kristin Carrico of CDK Global, Berea and Ryan Schaffer of Expedia, Yeganeh and Nader Naini of Fraizer Investments, Emily and Jeremy Ernst of the Boeing company, Pam Dickinson of Persephone ventures, Noreen and Kabir Shahani of Amperity, and many more.

Currently the round is still open to investors who are excited about our mission of bringing a much deserved dream closet to every busy woman. Interested in trying Armoire? Get started by completing your style profile to unlock your dream closet here.