Adaptive clothing brand No Limbits has raised $1.4 million in a continuing seed round.
Founder Erica Cole said no one investor led the round for the Richmond-based startup, but there was participation from Georgetown's Halcyon Angels and New York's The Disability Opportunity Fund and follow-on investments from Mark Cuban and Emma Grede, who previously backed the company on ABC's "Shark Tank."
Cole said she is using the seed round to expand the company’s product line and cover rising costs due to supply chain issues. The VC money is being used to accelerate growth to capture a market Cole sees as primed for a leader because it’s overlooked and underserved.
“I truly believe No Limbits can be a household name for people with disabilities when talking about clothing,” Cole said. “Not necessarily just people with disabilities, but any challenge dressing.”
No Limbits began in 2018 after a car accident resulted in Cole having her left leg amputated below the knee. She began creating clothing in response to a need for pants that fit over her prosthesis, pivoting her career as a chemist in favor of being a full-time entrepreneur and running her apparel business.
New products launching early next year will address the needs of those in wheelchairs, people with limited dexterity in their hands, and “sensory friendly” products for those with sensory processing disorders.
The company currently has five full-time and three part-time staff. Monthly revenue in November hit $25,000 and Cole expects $1.5 million next year. Her biggest hurdles have been supply chain related. Shipping costs are the major cost driver for her business.
“Our first order cost us more to ship than it did to produce, which is wild,” said Cole.
Another burden is ethically sourcing raw materials of her clothing. Consumers have become more conscious of how products are made and want to know that all through the process of making something like a shirt — from how the cotton was farmed to the shirt sewn and packaged — that people were paid a living wage. And it matters to Cole that people are being paid a fair wage and she doesn’t have a “build at all costs” mentality about the company.
“There's so much happening right now, especially in China, where a large amount of cotton comes from,” said Cole. “They were finding that these farms and producers of raw materials in China were buying some certifications that said that certain raw materials were ethically obtained, but they just bought the certification and it wasn't actually ethically obtained. So now we're spending time intentionally on like making sure that we know where our raw materials are coming from.”
The business community of Richmond and the advice of "Shark Tank" investors Grede and Cuban have been instrumental for Cole in figuring out how to tackle the supply chain issues and other business hurdles. Cuban and Grede initially invested $100,000 into the company for a 10% stake. Cole said the plan is to be conservative with cash flow and prioritize earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization growth — a measure of profitability — over top-line revenue though this stage of her business.
“Within this round, we want to be able to show a really clear path to profitability,” Cole said. “We’re going to be cutting it close in 2023 but just showing there’s a path to this being self-sustaining versus relying on VC dollars.”
