Sojo: The Founders’ Journey Behind Britain’s On-Demand Tailoring Revolution

In London’s eclectic startup ecosystem—where creativity intersects with culture—a new wave of innovators is rethinking industries long left untouched by technology. One such startup is Sojo, a fashion-tech platform that is bringing the centuries-old craft of clothing repairs and alterations into the modern digital age.

Originally established with a mission beyond commerce, Sojo is revolutionizing what it means to have long-lived, sustainable and well-crafted clothing. Central to this mission is a young founder, whose trip from vintage shopping to sustainable fashion entrepreneurship represents a new era of conscious business building.

From Personal Frustration to Opportunity

The idea for Sojo was born from a very relatable problem—pieces of clothing that people love but can’t wear because they don’t fit quite right or are slightly damaged.

Josephine Philips, Sojo’s founder and CEO, experienced this first-hand. While thrifting and shopping vintage, she found that many pieces she adored required alterations—yet the process was outdated, inconvenient, and often inaccessible to younger shoppers. In her own words, she couldn’t believe how archaic the tailoring experience felt in a world where services were becoming increasingly digital and convenient.

This frustration ignited a question:

What if tailoring and alterations could be as seamless as ordering a meal or booking a ride?

Rather than accepting tailoring as an inevitable hassle, Josephine saw an opportunity for transformation—one that would make clothing repairs and modifications as accessible and effortless as ride-sharing.

The Founders & Formation

To bring this vision to life, Josephine took a bold step early in her entrepreneurial journey—she turned this insight into a startup while still fresh out of university.

Founded in 2021 and based in London, Sojo entered the fashion-tech space with a bold mission: to make clothing alterations and repairs accessible and convenient for a new generation of consumers.

Initially built as an on-demand consumer service, Sojo now bridges the worlds of retail, sustainability, and convenience. By providing both direct consumer tailoring services and integrated solutions for fashion brands, Sojo is building its identity as a linchpin in the emerging world of circular fashion.

Building the Product: Tailoring That Fits Modern Consumers

At its core, Sojo is an app-driven platform that connects customers with local seamsters and tailoring experts through an intuitive digital experience.

Here’s what makes the product distinctive:

• Seamster Discovery & Booking: Users can browse a directory of vetted local seamsters and select tailoring or repair services directly through the app.
• Convenient Pickup & Delivery: Sojo’s network of couriers collects garments from customers’ homes and returns them once tailoring is complete—making the whole experience frictionless.
• Tiered Services: From simple hems and seam adjustments to more complex alterations, customers can customize their requests and track orders through the platform.

The user experience was deliberately designed to mirror the simplicity of modern digital services—something Josephine believed was missing in tailoring. “If you can order food, you should be able to fix your clothes,” was her early product ethos.

Sojo reframes tailoring from an inconvenient chore to a convenient service, helping customers rethink how they value and care for their wardrobe.

Early Validation & Growth

Sojo’s early validation came from traction before scale. After launching the service in London, the demand was immediate and genuine.

Rather than relying solely on traditional advertising, the startup leaned into grassroots awareness—primarily through social media communities, niche fashion circles, and sustainability advocates—groups that had long recognized clothing waste and were eager for a tangible solution.

The startup also achieved noteworthy early funding milestones. Sojo raised $2.4 million in early funding led by venture investors like CapitalT and Ascension, underscoring confidence in both the business model and the broader potential of circular fashion services.

Alongside consumer interest, Sojo began forging partnerships with fashion brands such as Ganni, integrating the tailoring and repair service directly into brand experiences and retail ecosystems.

This move into business-to-business (B2B) operations expanded Sojo’s reach—allowing brands to offer value-added services to their customers and fostering deeper engagement with sustainable fashion.

Challenges & Lessons Learned

Like any founder journey, Sojo’s path was not without obstacles:

🔹 Market Education: Tailoring was not traditionally a digital service. Many consumers had never considered mending a garment via an app, requiring constant communication and education about the value and ease of clothing repair.

🔹 Scaling Seamster Networks: Building a reliable network of seamsters meant reaching beyond traditional workshops and encouraging artisans to adopt a tech-enabled model—a challenge given the craftsmanship nature of the work.

🔹 Funding Bias: As a young Black female founder in the tech and fashion space, Josephine faced the stark reality that only a small fraction of venture capital flows to women and underrepresented founders, adding another layer of challenge in fundraising.

These challenges reinforced a core lesson: founders must be educators as much as innovators—introducing not just a product, but a shift in behavior.

What Sets the Founder Apart

Josephine’s arc is remarkable not just in terms of its age or starting point, but in how she was able to bring a personal understanding of issues to shifts in culture.

At 23, she wasn’t a veteran executive with decades in fashion tech. She was a recent graduate, a fashion lover, and someone who experienced the problem she was solving. Her empathy as a user made her a deeply effective founder.

In her early years, she interned at secondhand fashion marketplace Depop, which deepened her understanding of sustainable fashion and youth consumer behavior—knowledge that would become instrumental in shaping Sojo’s direction.

Josephine’s leadership style is rooted in collaboration, curiosity, and resilience. She built partnerships with brands, cultivated a community of seamsters, and positioned Sojo not just as an app, but as part of a broader movement toward circular fashion culture—where sustainability and convenience coexist.

What truly sets her apart is this synthesis of mission and user experience—a combination many founders aspire to, but few achieve with such clarity.

Where Sojo Is Headed (2026 and Beyond)

By 2026, Sojo is no longer just a local London startup—it is expanding geographically and operationally.

The company has opened physical service spaces in partnership with Westfield malls, including its first international site in Paris, solidifying its retail presence beyond the digital realm.

At the same time, Sojo continues to deepen brand partnerships with retailers and fashion houses, making alteration services a standard part of the buying experience—whether online or in store.

Josephine’s vision extends beyond alterations alone—she sees Sojo influencing product design itself. By collecting data on the types of repairs requested, the company plans to provide insights to brands that can help design better-built garments, reducing waste at the source.

This integration of operations, data, and sustainability could position Sojo as a foundational platform in a new era of fashion—where longevity, not disposability, defines quality.

Conclusion: A Founder Story With Purpose and Persistence

The Sojo story tells us something vital about today’s founders:

• They are not simply building tools for other people to use – they are addressing profoundly human challenges.
• They connect personal passion with broad cultural shifts.
• They reshape industries through empathy, not just innovation.

Josephine Philips didn’t launch Sojo to chase buzz. She launched it to challenge a norm—a norm that consigns clothing to the landfill and ignores the craftsmanship beneath every stitch. She saw an inefficiency and turned it into a business that matters—to consumers, to seamsters, and to the broader world of sustainable fashion.

Sojo is not simply a startup. It is a reminder that purpose-driven innovation—when done with intention—can reshape how people live and consume.