Fashion brands regularly pay €18,000 to €30,000 annually on agency retainers and fair booths, yet 80% fail within five years due to broken physical distribution. Hyperscout is disrupting this landscape with a data-driven matchmaking engine that profiles brands and retailers across eleven core variables to connect them instantly. 

Boasting 20+ years of industry experience from founder Jan and partnerships with Europe’s premier trade fairs like Pitti Immagine, Hyperscout is turning random guesswork into high-margin precision retail. We sat down with Jan to discuss their journey, plans for growth, and the live round on Leapfunder.

• Hi Jan, thank you for agreeing to do the interview. Tell us about Hyperscout and the idea that got it all started.

I’ve spent over twenty years in fashion wholesale — brand side, retail side, and every trade fair in between.

In all that time, the way a brand finds a store has barely changed: you hire an agent, book a fair booth, send cold emails, and hope for the best. Over and over, I saw the same tragedy unfold: a great brand sitting in the wrong doors, while a fantastic store remained completely unaware of a brand that would have flown off its shelves. Nobody was matching them on anything beyond who happened to know whom.

Hyperscout fixes that. We read a brand’s DNA straight from its lookbook and website, profile retailers using the same criteria, and score the match across eleven key variables. We show the brand exactly which stores it belongs in and why.

Europe’s leading trade fairs are already building on our platform. Pitti Immagine launched Pitti Immagine x Hyperscout to its exhibitors, calling it “a revolution in brand-and-buyer matchmaking.” Modefabriek and INDX are live as well.

• What problems are you trying to solve? What are the benefits of Hyperscout?

Fashion brands regularly pay €18,000 to €30,000 a year on agency retainers just to be seen in Paris or Milan, with zero guarantee of a single order. Eight out of ten new fashion brands go bust within five years, and it is almost always distribution, not product, that kills them.

Meanwhile, retailers are inundated with pitch emails and default to buying the same old names. Trade fairs go dark between editions.

The root cause? There hasn’t been a transparent, data-driven way to match a brand with the retailers where it will actually sell. Everyone is guessing, and everyone pays for the guesswork every season.

Here is what Hyperscout delivers:

• For Brands: Scouting time drops from three months to two weeks. Brands get a ranked retailer list with verified contacts, an integrated CRM and pipeline tool, and a clear rationale attached to every match, so you know why a store fits before spending a cent. All for €750 a month compared to an €18,000 retainer
• For Retailers: It’s completely free. They form our supply side and get presented with brands that genuinely fit their shelves, rather than another irrelevant cold DM

• You have a live round on Leapfunder. What makes it the right tool for your startup, and what do you expect from the round?

We are currently raising an angel round on Leapfunder.

Leapfunder fits our exact stage. We don’t need a lengthy valuation debate right now; its convertible note structure allows us to bring capital in as it arrives and let the next priced round set the valuation. That is ideal for a startup whose intrinsic value leaps with every major trade fair contract we sign.

The second reason is even more important to me: Leapfunder brings strategic network value, not just capital. Fashion wholesale runs on relationships. An angel investor who understands fashion, retail, or European market expansion is worth immensely more to us than a check from someone who doesn’t.

We are using this cash to institutionalize a sales motion that already converts, backed by a community of investors I can actually call upon. If you know fashion wholesale or have scaled a two-sided platform in Europe, I’d much rather have you on our cap table than a fund that has never set foot in a showroom.

• How much growth potential do you see for Hyperscout?

Across Europe and North America, 60,000 to 75,000 active wholesale brands spend between €18,000 and €30,000 annually on agencies, scouting, and trade shows. That represents an existing €1.8 billion market. Our immediate focus segment, mid-market and premium brands, accounts for €150 to €180 million of that total.

Macro trends are creating a strong tailwind for us. Multi-brand independent retail is experiencing a resurgence as luxury brands pull back to owned stores. Simultaneously, direct-to-consumer (DTC) digital ad economics have collapsed, forcing digitally native brands to build physical wholesale distribution for the very first time.

Then comes our compounding network effect: every match closes a feedback loop. Retailers respond — accepted, declined, and why (too expensive, wrong aesthetic, already stocked, send more like this). This gives us live, granular preference data for each store, brand, and price point. While transaction platforms like JOOR or Faire only see the order after a decision is made, and traditional agents keep relationships in their heads, Hyperscout sits right at the exact moment of choice.

We have already profiled 55,000 brands and 30,000 retailers, scaling to 100,000 retailers this year. Supply is frictionless, demand pays, and our dataset becomes harder to replicate with every passing season. Plus, the core engine isn’t limited to fashion — giftware, homeware, and beauty fairs are already asking us to expand into their verticals.

• What are your plans for the upcoming months? Tell us about your go-to-market strategy and your plan for acquiring customers.

We are driving growth through three distinct channels, ordered by capital efficiency:

• Trade Fair Partnerships (Lowest CAC): Starting this autumn, fair organizers will sell Hyperscout alongside winter edition booth packages (e.g., Pitti in January, INDX in February). The fair bills the brand directly with the booth and retains a 25% margin. Our acquisition cost for these brands is essentially zero
• Direct Outbound: My personal sales conversion metrics form the baseline of our expansion model: 50 approaches → 15 trials → 5 signed clients (30% trial-to-paid conversion, 68-day sales cycle). Doing this solo during the peak summer buying season generated over 150 active leads and 50 live trials. This round enables us to hire our first dedicated sales reps to execute this proven motion at scale
• Ambassador Network: Commission-based local industry insiders across France, Benelux, and the Nordics who leverage existing brand relationships without adding fixed overhead

Underpinning this is relentless service discipline: customer churn happens through silence, not price. We maintain a strict rule of personal replies within four business hours, zero leads left uncontacted past 48 hours, and a mandatory booked next step for every active account.

By spring, my objective is to have our major fair alliance contracts signed, our first sales reps fully onboarded and productive, and 100,000 retailers live on the platform. Industry leaders like Brax, Mustang, YAYA, Doré & Rose, and Woodbelt are already using Hyperscout. Mustang put it best after rolling us out across France and the Netherlands: “Hyperscout uncovered strong retail partners that were never previously on our radar.”

Thanks for sharing your journey with us. We wish Hyperscout the best of luck.

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