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When mens e-commerce platform Trunk Club launched in 2009 there was a buzz around town about its revolutionary model of matching men with actual stylists. An equal amount of excitement is building up this week due to reports that Trunk Club is in acquisition talks with Nordstrom. Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly has not confirmed the reports.
Trunk Club has raised over $12 million in the past four years from investors such as Greycroft and Apex, plus an undisclosed funding amount last summer.
This wouldn’t be the first fashion tech acquisition for Nordstrom, the retail giant that is constantly looking to stay digitally relevant: in 2011, Nordstrom acquired Los Angeles-based flash sales platform HauteLook. Now HauteLook plays a massive role in Nordstrom Rack’s sales made via mobile.
Nordstrom has also invested in men’s apparel company Bonobos, which Spaly founded in 2007 with a Stanford classmate. It was an invite from Anthos Capital that caused Spaly to jump on board with Trunk Club in 2009.
Spaly quickly made his mark on Trunk Club: he relocated the company to Chicago, scrapped the Skype interactions between men and stylists for e-mail and phone connections instead and then opened up a storefront for styling appointments.
Now, the company has over 200 employees and is quickly growing: Trunk Club is currently looking to hire more engineers, operations associates and stylists to its team.
“Hiring the first 10 sales people was tricky – we weren’t exactly sure what we were looking for and they weren’t sure what they were signing up for,” Spaly said in a FoundersCard blog post. “Another challenge was getting the word out to sign up the first 1000 members – we’re still not well known and working hard to spread our name across the country. Over time we’ve gotten a lot smarter about how to execute, improving our product assortment, our stylist team and our operations. Things run smoothly now but it’s been a long hard slog uphill to get there.”
