Investment Notes: Clutch

We are excited to announce the Blackbird 2022 LP is leading a $2M Pre-Seed round in Clutch.

When you meet a special founder, the feeling is electric. We felt that immediately with Clutch Founder and CEO, Annabel Hay, and Creative Director (and sister) Lucy Hay. 

Clutch’s first product is called Clutch Glue (a liquid fashion tape), and has sold almost $1M worth of units in its first 18 months, completely organically through social media (65M+ collective views) and in stores like Priceline, with agreements to launch soon in US retailers. All this was achieved entirely bootstrapped, outside of Annabel’s full-time job, with her and Lucy as a team of two. 

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Hollywood Tape Glue

The idea for Clutch came to life from Annabel’s frustration with existing solutions for keeping everything from dresses, sportswear, jewellery, and shoe straps, in place when worn.

Annabel was determined to develop a better option to Hollywood Tape, which loses adhesiveness quickly. While working full-time at JLL as a Project Manager based in Hong Kong, she engaged a research chemist at UNSW to develop a patented formulation for fashion glue, and then quickly got the formula into production, landing one of only two manufacturers in Australia who could process adhesives at the pH required. 

‍“I was let down by fashion tape. It doesn’t work, it sweats off, and it’s not sustainable, so I spent a year coming up with a glue instead” 

With a patented formula and a product to sell, Annabel brought on her sister Lucy as Creative Director. Lucy has spent 6 years in copywriting at ad agencies Ogilvy, Doyle Dane Bernbach, and Leo Burnett, and has been Annabel’s lifelong sounding board.  “I needed this to be well marketed, it had to reach everyone around the world, this wasn’t just an Australian problem, this is is something that affects the majority of the population – there was no one better I could trust with creative than my sister, who had been a copywriter in her day job for years”

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65M views on TikTok & Meta

Clutch launched in December 2022 with their first TikTok video, showing a simple Clutch use case: keeping a dress strap in place, that video now has 9M views. Overall, Clutch has 65M organic views across Tik Tok and Meta, and is using these social communities to inform more viral content ideas, use cases, and new product lines.   

Interesting use cases for their first Clutch Glue product include, keeping athletic wear in place (sports teams), hemming clothing or adding performance jewellery (entertainment and theatre), and affixing eyewear or masks (think healthcare practices). 

And happy customers love to make their love known, have a look at the comment section in any of their TikTok videos or see reviews from their website – you can also watch Annabel’s pitch on Shark Tank Australia to see the product in action.  

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Sold Out in 3 months + Stocked in Aus and the US

Clutch Glue sold out of their first 5K unit order in 3 months, they sold 25K units in their first 12 months, and are on track against 100K+ sold by the end of year. They are stocked in 470 Priceline stores, and became their third best seller within a week. Now Clutch is looking to launch in the US in 400 CVS locations (with potential to expand to 10K stores in Q2 2025), and are ranging with Woolworths and Coles.

Total sales are rocketing around the festive season, with the past month of November totalling more sales than the prior twelve months combined, and a strong trajectory of growth via direct and retailer channels ahead. 

Unlocking Global Expansion

Annabel and Lucy are forces of nature and we are proud to be on the Clutch journey alongside them.

This round will accelerate Clutch’s expansion with global retailers, if you have connections with distributors or directly with retailers including supermarkets, pharmacies or convenience stores, please reach out to Annabel directly at ahay@clutchglue.com – she would love to hear from you.

Clutch Glue is quickly becoming the go-to item you shouldn’t leave the house without, try it out yourself here! 

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Silk and Niki, on behalf of Blackbird