Online children’s clothing exchange Bertie & Bean has secured the first £70,000 of a £300,000 seed round to launch its online children’s clothing exchange to the mass market.

The Birmingham Science Park based company, which was an Oxygen Accelerator 2011 start-up, will use the combination of cash and services to launch, gain users and gather data, before raising the remaining £230,000.

Bertie & Bean is aimed at the parents of nought to four year olds in the UK, with the average family spending £700 per year clothing their children.

Co-founder James Tabor said: “There is a highly successful company in the US with a similar online children’s clothing exchange proposition, which has over 250,000 users participating in 1,000 ‘swaps’ per day. This company only launched in 2010, so while we are two years behind, realising the vast potential of the UK market is within our grasp.”