The problem
Across MENA, women who want a bra that actually fits face a thin local market: with an estimated 80% wearing the wrong size, many travel abroad to buy lingerie — and there is almost no Arabic-language guidance on finding the right fit.
How it works
Kenz is an e-commerce site selling bras, lingerie, and shapewear to MENA, primarily Saudi Arabia. Shoppers enter their measurements into the first Arabic online size calculator, which matches them to products in their size; orders arrive in discreet packaging. Around the store sits a women-for-women brand built on social media, fit content, and resources for finding the best-fitting products.
Pain points
Unfittable local assortments, wrong-size purchases, embarrassment buying intimate wear in person, and zero Arabic fit tools — the gap founders Christina Ganim and Nicola Cuoco drew from their own experience when they started Kenz as “a space online for women.”
Business model
Direct-to-consumer online retail: Kenz sells its lingerie and shapewear range outright, using fit tools and community content to convert and retain shoppers while expanding product selection, technology, and its teams in Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
Challenges
Holding fit quality while widening the size range, fending off large retail giants pushing online, and — as a startup in Palestine — persistent constraints on funds and talent: an early no-salary stretch nearly ended the company before Ibtikar’s $150,000 seed investment in June 2017 let it grow the team.
Funding
- Raised: six-figure pre-Series A (Mar 2021) led by Ibtikar Fund with APIC and Palestinian, Saudi, and American angels, to expand Saudi operations and team and broaden product selection and technology (Wamda).
- Earlier: $150,000 seed from Ibtikar Fund (Jun 2017); a place on the Misk 500 MENA accelerator programme (Wamda, Mar 2019).
Latest — Mar 2021
On 30 March 2021 Kenz closed its six-figure pre-Series A round led by Ibtikar Fund with APIC participating, planning to leverage APIC’s distribution and retail experience in its key Saudi market and to become a recognised industry leader in 2021.