Custom Bra Start-Up Raises Money from Angel Investors

Zyrra Custom Bras is a start-up company based in Boston, Massachusetts that deals with manufacturing custom bras for women, panties and selling related accessories. The company is selling its bras and matching panties through direct sales, meaning through specialists that sell to women through parties and other group events. This model is not new though, being used by other companies that have women as target.

The company aims at taking a frustrating and time consuming task, which is the bra shopping and transform it into a fun, pleasant and even exciting event. The fit specialists gather 10 of the women’s measurements (instead of the traditional 2 measurements) in less than 10 minutes at the specific social events and send them to the manufacturing. The custom bras are ready in less than one month from the purchase moment. Derek Ohly, the founder and the “bra guy” at Zyrra, says that “We do plan on revolutionizing the bra industry, which is in a different space than most innovation today.” He also says that the company has just a few products and that they need a family of products. This information Ohly says that he got from the one thousand customers that the company has so far.

This November, Zyrra Custom Bras has raised $445,000 from 17 investors, of seed financing from angel investors. Ohly says that “The planned round is $700,000 and we might be oversubscribed.” This founding round was led by the Boston Angel Investor Group Launchpad Venture Group, which offered $50,000 to the start-up. The money from the financing will be used to employ marketing and sales personnel in order to expand the home party sales company’s model into other regional markets than the Boston area. Also, Ohly says that “We have a product development list that essentially lists out what you would consider to be many of the standard styles of bra” so there will be made investments in the product development also. A small part of the investment will be for releasing other types of garments.

The company, besides revolutionizing the bra industry, is two times unique, first because it uses a software typically used for architecture and product development in engineering, electronics and furniture industries and secondly because the company has a much more different structure of investors that other companies in technology.

Previous to this financing project, Zyrra Custom Bras has raised aproximatively $350,000 from founders, friends, family, bank debt and from the Babson College seed fund.