How SOJO Got Into Selfridges: The Real Story

About this episode

Josephine Philips shares her journey of founding SOJO and the challenges faced in the fashion and tech industries.

Josephine Philips is the founder of SOJO, the UK's first on-demand clothing alterations and repairs app. She started SOJO by manually cycling garments across London to validate the idea before raising £1.8M in pre-seed funding (backed by Depop's own founder), landed Forbes 30 Under 30, and opened a permanent concession in Selfridges. In this episode, Josephine gets brutally honest about the real journey: finding a tech co-founder early on,, the hiring mistakes that slowed her down, a six-week fundraising sprint that changed everything, and what it actually means to build with the end in mind. This is a masterclass in doing more with less, moving fast without breaking your team, and why representation in VC funding is still one of the most urgent conversations in entrepreneurship. What we cover: Finding a tech co-founder as a non-technical founder Navigating the fashion space outside of fast fashion Finding a niche in a typically crowded space The timings and strategy of raising investment The stats around investment for Black Women Hiring and growing a team for your business, not following the status quo How to build a B2B strategy without losing focus How to SOJO x Selfridges…

People in this episode

Host: Rochelle Humes

Guest: Josephine Philips

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• fundraising
• fashion industry
• tech co-founders
• representation in VC
• business strategy

Keywords

• SOJO
• clothing alterations
• fundraising
• tech co-founder
• VC representation
• fashion niche
• entrepreneurship

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: SOJO, Selfridges, Forbes, Depop

Places: London

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