Meet Hasna Kourda, co-founder of Save Your Wardrobe

My name is Hasna Kourda and I am the CEO and co-founder of Save Your Wardrobe. My background is in economics and corporate strategy, and I have always had a keen interest in luxury fashion. After witnessing the immense overconsumption across the fashion industry, I decided to launch Save Your Wardrobe, a platform that encourages consumers to fall in love with their wardrobes again.

Save Your Wardrobe exists to ignite systematic change in the fashion industry. It is an integrated platform that draws from an ecosystem of easy to access aftercare services. Our digitally enabled clothing aftercare and platform will allow you to reach circularity targets whilst also granting insight into customer behaviour. Our user facing app helps users to access a range of on-demand local aftercare services uses artificial intelligence to allow garments to be easily scanned, identified, and stored in users’ virtual wardrobes, which ultimately helps reduce unnecessary repeat purchases.

What inspired you to launch Save Your Wardrobe and what is the end goal?

I grew up in Tunisia, where my family instilled in me the concept of a circular economy in me from an early age. Everything we used was repurposed. We always made sure nothing went to waste, even when an item’s initial purpose was fulfilled, a second one was found. There is life after life in our culture that is inherently circular.

My grandmother used to repurpose old garments into the most exquisite carpet, known as a kilim. The finished kilim would be used to keep the floors cool when the temperatures soared in summer. It was beautiful to experience the act of taking something no longer in use and transforming it by giving it a second life and new function. Seeing her do this from such a young age meant that as I grew up, I was always considerate in my purchases and the impact they may have.

What does Save Your Wardrobe offer its target audience?

Our ecosystem of services includes an offering of alterations, repairs, eco-cleaning, customisation and upcycling. Our most popular service is alterations. Especially when it comes to our brand partners.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

Ultimately, I think what makes us so unique is our technology expertise, adaptability and ability to scale out end-to-end operations to any location through our decentralised ecosystem of care specialists. This ecosystem is a one-of-a-kind integrated platform with access to logistics, service providers and personalised dashboard of analytics for brands and retailers. They’re able to have a unique view on consumption habits and can take action on them, allowing them to build circularity into their designs and also contribute to re CO2 emissions from the clothes in circulation.

What plans do you have for Save Your Wardrobe over the next two years?

Our last fundraiser has allowed us to expand within the European market with a focus on growing the business in the UK, Germany, and France. We want to grow our technology and product teams, putting the business at the forefront of wardrobe and aftercare technology and innovation.

Any new launches we should know about?

We’re working on building more ground to support brands and retailers offer circular solutions to their customers. Our back-end platform will continue to evolve to adapt to the needs for more sustainable logistics and include wider service providers in the digital era. As a start-up that thrives on agility, we see that 2023 will require incredible adaptability and resilience. We are also witnessing through our user-facing app that consumers are starved for solutions that meet their intentions for more sustainable and circular fashion. We have close to a million items of clothing ready to meet their sustainable future by means of an ecosystem of aftercare solutions.

How does technological advancement speak to the strategic direction of your business?

Save Your Wardrobe is an innovative, circular business model based on cutting edge technology and grafted on new consumer behaviours. We use AI and ML to digitise wardrobes and streamline the aftercare booking experience through an ecosystem of service partners. We are using cutting edge technology to make it easier for users to upload items and book aftercare services. We’ve had over half a million items digitised already. This technology is also driving our B2B arm of the business as we continue to build personalised platforms based on brands’ needs to integrate aftercare ecosystems. Our technology is supporting brands’ reach, circularity, and sustainability targets. 

Why do you think your business has had such a positive impact across your industry?

Our booking platform drives conscious choices. We enable any garment’s lifespan to be increased by a minimum of one year, decreasing its carbon footprint 24%. Aftercare is a vital pillar of the circular economy- and through our pioneering solution, we are making it convenient and simple. We’re playing a key role in supporting global brands’ reach their circularity targets. Our partnership with Zalando entails connecting their customers to aftercare services, to support their ambitious target of extending the life of 50 million garments by 2023. This underpins our own overarching mission, which is to ultimately divert as much textile waste from landfill as possible.

What was the journey like when you decided to raise funding for your startup? And what tips would you give to early-stage founders getting ready to take the same path?

As a woman working in tech, the space can be quite challenging. Luckily for us, we had early support from great groups like Farfetch that helped us prove our concept and the need for our solution in the fashion industry. Earlier this year we closed a $3m funding round that proved our circular model is tech-enabled and globally scalable.

Describe your business in three words.

Pioneering. Disruptive. Circular.

What’s the single most important decision that you made that contributed to your business?

My ability to be agile and adaptable, while also being able to pivot quickly. I’ve made the difficult decisions of having to turn away the wrong investors, but I trusted my gut and they turned out to be the best and most strategic decisions for the business.