Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts.
University friends Theo El-Kattan and Henry McNeill-Njoku were playing football one night in 2019 when they got to scheming about something unrelated to sports. Both experienced thrifters, they envisioned a fashion resale startup that was as curated and elevated as first-hand retail. Soon after, they quit their high-flying careers in medicine and finance to launch Known Source.
Known Source is an answer to its founders’ frustrations over other resale sites being overrun with low-quality goods and de-emphasising the sellers. They wanted to recreate the fashion-resale-community feel they’d experienced on the streets of Soho or at London car boot sales, through their own platform.
“We wanted to [spotlight] a select number of sellers, chosen by us, with high-quality products, rather than allowing anyone to be a seller, potentially ending up with a high volume of low-quality products on the platform and making it harder for the customer to find a good-quality piece,” says El-Kattan.
This summer, Known Source will open in Westfield Stratford City, one of London’s biggest shopping centres. The one-year tenancy is an important juncture for the resale business: helping the duo seek the all-important investment they need to scale their team. Known Source secured £300,000 pre-seed funding in 2022, and is currently a third of the way through a £400,000 raise, which the founders say is “picking up pace”.
They face the usual challenges of a fledgling startup, particularly in today’s economic climate. “There’s not enough hours in the day. We made quite a difficult decision to really slim down our team [of four] last year to just us two because of what’s going on in the world. It’s a difficult environment for small businesses to be in,” says McNeill-Njoku. “We had to reanalyse everything we’re doing and be really strategic with our approach moving forward. That of course means that Theo and I have way, way too many hats on. We just don’t have the capacity to be able to execute our strategies for the future. So right now, that is the biggest challenge.”
Investors to date include Chris Britton of B&B Investment Partners; sustainability advocate and entrepreneur Sian Sutherland; Lyst CCO Simon Dance; actor Maisie Williams; entrepreneur Reuben Selby; and W Communications founder Warren Johnson. The latter is also providing free PR until they reach Series A funding.
The future of retail?
Today, Known Source works with 33 experienced sellers, who each curate their own inventory for the site. Brands include Prada, Miu Miu, Stone Island, CP Company and Jean Paul Gaultier. The aim is to elevate secondhand fashion to feel like curated retail, rather than oversaturating it. As is typical for resale platforms, Known Source takes a fee from each sale. The business is largely online, but has held two pop-ups in East London to date.
As part of its mission to rival traditional retail, Known Source markets resale like retail, with high-quality shoots as well as elevated store displays and merchandising. “Secondhand shouldn’t come second to retail,” says McNeill-Njoku. “We want to elevate it to show that archival pieces are works of art.” Each Known Source piece is one of one, so stock will rotate almost daily to create a fresh experience. Sellers will do residencies throughout the year, while store assistants will act as personal stylists helping customers find that one piece they need.
“We boldly say this is the future of retail,” McNeill-Njoku adds. “It’s a very different approach to how retail normally operates. It’s experiential, personalised, community based and very dynamic.”
Known Source found its first cohort of sellers from the founders’ own network of friends and fellow thrifters. Now, they meet new sellers at pop-ups, archive events and via recommendation from their existing circle.
The founders plan to reach 70 sellers by the end of the year, with a particular focus on the luxury space. “We have a lot of dealers in tech-wear, and that’s performing really well. We’re thinking if we can recruit more dealers in high fashion we’ll be able to perform even better in that space too,” says El-Kattan. While the network is currently UK based, they’re looking to recruit some new blood from across Europe in the coming months, with prospective sellers in France, Spain and the Netherlands.
From side hustle to scale
It took a while to turn what started as a side hustle into a bona fide company. In 2017, the duo secured a spot on UCL’s Hatchery incubator for student/graduate startups, which provided them with eight weeks of coaching and advice on everything from securing investment to building a business plan. After, they each invested personal funds (for McNeill-Njoku, via a startup loan), and raised pre-seed investment led by Sutherland, founder of A Plastic Planet, to get Known Source off the ground.
It’s been a learning curve. One of the advisors from the Hatchery fund connected McNeill-Njoku and El-Kattan with Dean Ricketts, founder of marketing firm The Watch-Men Agency and Shubhankar Ray, currently creative director of homeware brand Loaf (he’s previously led design at brands from G Star Raw to Levi’s). “We initially pitched to them to invest and work with us [in June 2020] but after eight minutes, Shubhankar left the call,” El-Kattan says, “he told us we had no passion and we were reading off a script. And he was right.” They went away for a year and learnt how to talk about their business. A year later, they had a second call with Ricketts and Ray and they both joined the Known Source advisory board: Ricketts connects them to potential investors and collaborators, while Ray advises on the creative.
To secure the spot in Westfield Stratford, Known Source won the Westfield Grand Prix, a competition for UK-based startups with a focus on sustainability, where the winner secures store space in Westfield for one year from August 2024. Known Source was up against six other more established startups including The Seam and Dragon’s Den supported startup Glaize.
“While Known Source isn’t the first secondhand store across our London centres, it marks a significant milestone as the first of its kind at Westfield Stratford City,” says Jacinta Rowsell, director of operations at the centre’s owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. “This move is particularly exciting because it responds directly to the increasing demand from consumers for sustainable and unique shopping experiences. Known Source’s arrival at Westfield Stratford City signifies a commitment to meet evolving consumer preferences and signifies a potential trend towards more sustainable retail offerings in our centres.”
Known Source isn’t ruling out a permanent store in the future, though for now the focus is on shorter-term lets. The brand’s recent Shoreditch pop-up drew a mix of East London teens and 80-year-old tourists, helping to boost brand awareness and find Known Source audiences outside of its original Gen Z demographic.
“We want to create the complete package, so you come in and you really feel like you’re part of an experience as opposed to just shopping,” McNeill-Njoku says. “That’s what has been really successful in our pop-ups as well. People love coming in and speaking to people who are really passionate about the unique clothing they’re selling.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Here's what needs to change for in-store shopping to become more sustainable
Cash-rich, time-poor? Fashion sourcers are luxury’s new secret weapon
How resale platform Luxe Collective is riding TikTok fame to compete