Zed Sleep is raising its seed round. Here's what it proved first

Zed Sleep is raising its seed round. Until now, we’ve bootstrapped alongside a small pre-seed raise, and I’ve been reluctant to take on more money, so I want to explain why I’m raising now.

A lot of founders raise to find out whether their idea works. I wanted to raise to scale something that already does: from a position of strength, not to protect the business.

That mattered more for Zed than for most brands. There are thousands of pyjama companies, people don’t think of sleepwear as a way to improve their sleep, and Zed is expensive. So before raising a seed round, or spending anything meaningful on growth, I wanted to prove three things: that the product genuinely works, that people whose opinion carries weight trust it, and that we can sell it profitably.

Proof one: a product that works

I spent a long time talking to sleep scientists and surrounding myself with people who knew the space before I had the conviction to launch. Developing the product took 12 to 18 months, working with sleep scientists and designers who have worked with some of the leading activewear brands.

The fabric is 90% beechwood micromodal, which gives Zed its functional benefits, combined with a premium biodegradable elastane for stretch. That stretch matters. We move around 50 times a night on average, so the fabric has to move with the body and sit at the right distance from the skin to wick moisture.

That combination was a conscious decision, made with the sleep scientists and designers along the way. Every choice came back to one question: will this genuinely improve sleep quality and comfort through the night?

Function always comes first. Zed has to be the best thing you can wear for sleep quality, skin comfort and temperature regulation. That it also looks and feels premium is a bonus, not the point.

Proof two: the right people wearing it

We launched very organically at the end of last year, to a waiting list built on LinkedIn. The early press helped too, with features on sites like Fitt Insider and Wellworthy driving early sales. At launch I’d switched the website on for every market, and we got orders from 16 countries. That taught me very quickly how painful tariffs are when you’re shipping from your own house.

Then we focused on getting Zed onto people at the top of their sport. We now have Premier League footballers, Team GB athletes and an F1 team wearing it. They came to us in different ways. Some found us and bought again. Some came through club physios who ran trials with their teams. Some we gifted.

That foundation mattered for a premium product in a category people don’t associate with sleep quality or recovery. When elite athletes and their physios trust it, it’s much easier for everyone else to trust that it works.

Proof three: ads that pay back

e only switched on paid ads in June, once that foundation was in place. They’ve worked profitably from the start, and now we’re starting to put more behind them.

Meta works for us because there is so much education to do. People need to understand why sleepwear can make a difference before they’ll pay for it, so it’s about finding formats that teach and move people through to buying.

What works best is me telling the story of why I built Zed and why it’s so expensive. Leaning into the price, rather than pretending it isn’t expensive and letting people discover that when they land on the site, has been a force for good. We’ve tested AI-generated concepts with a studio, and most of them haven’t worked. We found our first AI-only winner recently, a listicle on why athletes and scientists rate it, but the founder story is still what carries us.

There’s a side effect. Because most of our ads feature me, a mid-thirties man, most of our customers so far are men, in a sleepwear market dominated by women. Working out how to reach women as well as we reach men is one of our next big focuses.

Why raise now

At Harry's went from the sixth person in the UK business to being part of a team of 130 at its peak. We moved from DTC and subscription only into retail, launched in several personal care categories beyond shaving, and expanded into new countries.

The biggest lesson is a cliché, but it’s true: you don’t have a business if you’re not focused on the customer and the product doesn’t add real value. Everything about Zed starts there. If you care about your sleep and you wear something against your skin, I want Zed to be the best thing you can buy. If you deliver a product that good, there are enough people at the top of the market willing to pay for it.

I’m ambitious about Zed and the sleep category, and I want to build something sustainable and profitable along the way. So for now it’s me as the only full-time person, working with a group of specialist contractors, and I plan to keep it lean until we reach the scale that genuinely needs a bigger team.

So this seed round is about putting more behind what’s already working, not finding out whether it works. I’m looking for investors who can help us get there: people who understand the category and bring something beyond the cheque.

Sleepwear hasn’t seen real innovation in a long time. Most of it is designed to look good, not to help you sleep. I want Zed to change what people expect from what they wear to bed.

If you’d like to learn more about Zed and its seed funding round, connect with Ben Dancer on LinkedIn.