Against the climate of uncertainty and the international slow-down of high-risk investments, Greek companies continue to raise funding with their sights set on further development. SafeSize takes the lead in funding, having raised €14 million in a funding round in which the Greek Phaistos Investment Fund participated.
The funding round was also joined by a major retail player in the footwear industry as well as existing international investors such as Dutch Convent Capital and 3TS Capital Partners. SafeSize has developed a 3D foot scanner, through which it enables consumers to find perfect fitting shoes, while helping retail businesses to reduce the costs related to shoe returns. With its innovative venture, SafeSize aspires to provide a solution to a problem the global footwear market faces, the size of which is estimated at 400 billion euros.
SafeSize 3D Foot Scanner is already installed in 2,500 stores in 50 countries worldwide. Some of SafeSize’s clients include major sportswear retailers such as INTERSPORT, Decathlon, Sports Direct, Super Sports Xebio, etc. The company is simultaneously offering an application through which the consumer can scan their feet with their mobile phone in order to find the right shoe size while shopping online.
As he explains, the technology has already helped over 20 million consumers choose shoes based on their needs. The company not only has data of consumers’ feet (3D foot scans), but also has a system that scans the inside of all shoe models available in the market, creating the largest database in the world of inner shoe dimensions (3D shoe scans).
Angelos Stavrakis says that every year more than 2 million shoes, from sneakers to heels, are scanned at one of the company’s nine shoe scanning facilities in Europe, Asia and America. The company, based in the Netherlands, employs people from multiple nationalities, of which around 22 work in the Research & Development center in Greece. “Part of the funds will go towards strengthening the team in Greece as well as developing new products,” he says, adding that the startup is expanding its activity in Australia, New Zealand and America. In the next period, the company will launch the autonomous electronic sales assistant (Digital Sales Assistant), which will be able to make recommendations to consumers by combining their foot data and their personal preferences with the available stock of each store. Profitability is now a key criterion for investing in start-up companies, and Angelos Stavrakis explains to Kathimerini that SafeSize is recording organic profitability and that the loan the company received from Silicon Valley Bank (which recently collapsed) was repaid last July.
You can read the original article in Greek HERE
Journalist: Despina Konti
