Huub hits £1million in crowdfunding campaign

The initial £250k target was smashed in less than a week.

Derby-based UK multisport brand Huub launched its Crowdcube crowdfunding campaign to raise a minimum of £250,000 in order to accelerate growth into new territories, through category expansion and extension.

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Just over a week in to the campaign the company has exceeded the one million pound mark with less than 1040 investors and still has three weeks to run.

The company launched it's investment campaign last week via popular investment site Crowdcube with the aim to raise £250,000 of public money in order to accelerate growth into new territories, and through category expansion and extension.

The £250,000 target would have equated to a shareholding of 6.41 per cent of the company based on current valuation of £14,657,760.

Olympic medallist triathletes and long-term Huub athletes, brothers Alistair and Jonny Brownlee, kickstarted the fundraising, which Huub say will allow it to continue to scale its direct-to-consumer offering, expand the product range in its fast-growing cycling category, cater for the increasing number of women taking up endurance sports, and grow its presence in international markets, most notably the US and Germany.

In 2019, HUUB turned over £4.8m and from 2015 to 2019, with an average sales growth of 32 per cent year-on-year, with this year seeing an incredible uplift of 681 per cent in cycling sales alone.

The brand, who co-sponsor the track specific Huub Wattbike team, specialises in elite performance, research and innovation.

"In building out our cycling category, and broadening its reach into new territories we will continue to drive towards one common goal – ‘speed’" says Huub founder and CEO Dean Jackson. "We’ve got the team to achieve it and will be constantly building on that so it’s a really exciting time for us – we want the whole cycling community to be a part of our journey with our Crowdcube crowdfund".

Huub specialist cycling lead is Huub Wattbike rider/ employee Dan Bigham, who's background in F1 aerodynamics makes him, according to Jackson, the driving force to behind much of the Huub cycling-specific apparel.

The holistic sports brand also comprises of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) engineers, sports engineering and physiology, aerodynamicists, kinesiologists, nutrition scientists, Olympians and world champions, as well as Rob Lewis and the team at Vorteq/Totalism, and physiology lecturer Steve Faulkner, responsible for Huub's heated trousers.

"We’re firmly locked on to making our mark overseas too" says Jackson, "and tapping into the US $5 billion dollar bike apparel market, as well as Germany

"We’ll be growing out the team to specifically target the US market, working with both clubs and at the elite level, and with newly appointed distributors and partners soon to be announced to come, we’re ready. Ashton Lambie, former world record holder in the individual pursuit will assist in navigating the US cycling scene, but the reality is we expect the speed of our apparel to do the talking"