Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Angel

Investor Stage

Early stage Venture,Seed

Tom Chapman OBE is an investor in early-stage companies and co-founder of MATCHESFASHION.COM.
Tom has an investment portfolio that spans multiple industries including technology, logistics, beauty, fashion, health, and medical cannabis. He invests in committed founders and experienced management teams to grow disruptive mission-driven businesses that leverage technology to deliver a better service to consumers and transform the way the world works.
Tom's recent investments include disruptive beauty brand HEYDAY, a one-stop shop for personalised skincare treatments; size-inclusive womenswear brand Universal Standard; Caliva, California's largest fully licensed integrated cannabis dispensary, retailer and distributor; by Humankind, a personal care brand seeking to eliminate single-use plastic; Convoy, which connects truckers with shippers to fill unused trucking capacity, reducing the environmental impact of freight; feminine health brand, OHNE; baby food business, Cerebelly; medical cannabis startup, Plena; and the world’s first stock exchange dedicated to the IPO and trading of commercial real estate assets, IPSX.
Tom's work as an investor builds on his experience founding MATCHESFASHION.COM, operating at the forefront of the changing face of retail for more than 30 years. With his wife Ruth, they grew the company from a single bricks-and-mortar store to a global luxury fashion brand with a reputation for supporting and nurturing new and emerging talent, and are credited with introducing designers such as Versace, Prada and Bottega Veneta to the UK.
Under Tom's leadership, MATCHESFASHION.COM invested heavily in technology across all areas of the business, enabling the company to better understand the lives of its customers and provide them with a fast, convenient and highly personalised service.
MATCHESFASHION.COM was one of the first luxury brands to go online in 2005; one of the first businesses to launch 90-minute delivery in 2016; and one of the first retailers to build a platform to provide a single truly unified view of customer's shopping across both online and physical channels.

It was, however, his understanding of how digital could radically transform how companies engaged with their customers and his appetite for challenging traditional practices that led to him being inducted into the Business of Fashion’s Hall of Fame in 2018 and being described as a “retail innovator”.
Tom recognised that MATCHESFASHION.COM could use digital not only to reach a global audience quickly but to build highly personal, intimate customer relationships, engaging shoppers with rich, resonant content and storytelling.
Paired with his challenger mentality, this insight saw Tom transform the company from a 14-store physical retailer into a leading global luxury e-commerce giant. From the launch of their website in 2007, MATCHESFASHION.COM grew at a rate of up to 100 per cent per year, raising £20 million in 2012 for a minority stake in the business.

In 2013, Tom's commitment to digital saw him rebrand all Matches' physical stores as MATCHESFASHION.COM. These decisions collectively enabled the business to accelerate from a valuation of £76m in 2012 to an acquisition price in excess of $1 billion just five years later. In 2017-18, the business had 95 per cent of sales online and 85 per cent internationally.
MATCHESFASHION.COM is also credited with pioneering blended retail, seamlessly bringing together physical and digital commerce to connect with customers over multiple touchpoints – whether that be through the company's events, magazine or private shopping experiences.
Before the sale of the business, Tom conceived of 5 Carlos Place, a five-storey townhouse combining luxury private shopping in a home environment with a purpose-built broadcasting hub and events space focused on creating engaging content for MATCHESFASHION.COM's 100 million annual online visitors.
Carlos Place was an extension of the private-shopping concept behind No.23, which reinvented retail service along the lines of private-client banking, delivering a highly personalised, intimate, bespoke shopping experience.
Throughout the growth of MATCHESFASHION.COM, Tom has focused on keeping customers and their lifestyles at the centre of all company decisions, recognising that top-class service is the foundation of all consumer-facing businesses and that technology investment should always enable a business to connect better with the consumer and support them.
Like MATCHESFASHION.COM, many of Tom's investments both challenge the status quo and have strong brands that build deep, personal relationships with customers by connecting with them across both physical and digital touchpoints, and place special importance on social responsibility, inclusiveness and environmental impact.
Having been described as "trailblazers" by The New York Times and "pioneers" by VOGUE, Tom and Ruth Chapman were awarded Draper's Lifetime Achievement Award for their contributions to fashion retail in 2017. In the same year MATCHESFASHION.COM won British Luxury Brand of the Year at the prestigious Walpole British Luxury Awards.
Tom Chapman, along with his wife Ruth Chapman, were awarded OBEs in the 2020 New Year Honours list for services to the international fashion retail industry.
An advocate of arts, sustainability and cultural causes, Tom is a member of the Innovation Circle at the Serpentine Gallery.