UK Handbag Brand Hill and Friends Now Seeking £655,000 Through Seedrs Funding Round

Hill and Friends, a UK-based handbag brand, is now seeking £655,000 through its equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs. Founded in 2015, Hills & Friends is described as a contemporary luxury fashion brand that was founded by former creative and brand directors of Mulberry, Emma Hill CBE and Georgia Fendley. 

“On leaving Mulberry the pair identified a gap in the market for a new generation, contemporary luxury accessories brand. The brand was to be ethically produced, digitally focused, direct to consumer, Gen Y and Gen Z targeted, and accessible with uncompromising quality. Their instinct proved inspired with many of these trends reflected in changes since seen in the market.”

Hill and Friends is on a mission to make the handbags women want to carry with the values they hold dear. The brand is designed and produced beautiful, practical and coveted women’s fashion accessories. Since launch Hill and Friends stockists have included Barneys, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Fortnum and Mason, John Lewis and Fenwick. Funds from the Seedrs round will go towards the following:

• Changing productions process: invest in scalable, agile manufacturing with less advance commitment and expenditure
• Systems and re-platforming: Moving from Magento to Shopify and launching shopping on Instagram
• Digital Marketing:  digital marketing for optimized ROI to accelerate brand awareness and accelerate the growth of direct to consumer web sales.

The company went on to add:

“Hill and Friends plan to invest in sustained brand and web support through an increased social ad spend and monthly campaign style shoots with an influencer. This will create rich and diverse content to distribute over all channels, tapping into new audiences by demonstrating product worn in different ways by a diverse group of people.”

Since launch, the campaign has successfully secured more than £565,000 from nearly 60 investors. It is set to close later this fall.