Unique Solutions of Dartmouth is hiring an investment bank to advise it on striking a strategic relationship with a multinational that could greatly accelerate the development of its customer base and valuable databank.

Founder and CEO Tanya Shaw said in an interview the company has been approached by several corporations interested in investing in Unique. She and her board will soon hire a New York investment bank to ensure not only the best valuation for any investment but also examine which partner would best help to grow Unique.

Unique Solutions is best known for the MyBestFit scanning booths it has installed in U.S. supermalls, which scan consumers’ bodies and tell them where they can find the best-fitting clothes. The scans are free for the consumer, and clothing makers pay Unique Solutions each time the system recommends their product.

But Shaw has long said the real value in the company lies in the databank of body scans that it collects through these retail scanning booths. It now has 860,000 scans, and will soon hit the 1 million mark. Unique’s is now the largest collection of body scans in the world, and Shaw is determined to increase it dramatically. She’s hoping to form a partnership with a company that has the massive network to accelerate the rollout of booths, and therefore build up the databank.

‘’We’re looking for someone who can really help us, someone with millions and millions of customers,’’ Shaw said, adding she hopes to seal a deal within six months.

Each scan produces about 200,000 points of reference for a person’s body shape. The vast databank of these scans is valuable for a range of uses, from designing clothes to making car seats to analysing wellness trends. What has helped the company greatly is that Big Data has become one of the hottest segments in the innovation field, which means the value of Unique’s databank has likely grown as the market perception of it has changed. ‘’We’ve always felt that data’s our biggest value, so it’s great to see that data is now king,’’ said Shaw.

The company is making headway both in the rollout of booths and in signing up clothing brands that show up on the consumers’ searches. It now has 60 booths across the U.S. – that’s fewer than the company had hoped for at this point, but Shaw said Unique has taken the time to make sure each is properly installed and staffed.

Unique signed up 46 brands in the last two months, and now offers consumers such household names as Eddie Bauer, Gap, Levi’s, Lane Bryant and White House/Black Market.

Shaw also said the company is negotiating with several other potential partners that could use the scanning technology. For example, it is looking at using the scans to help one large organization meet its demand for uniforms. It is also in discussions on using the scanning technology to help with reconstructive surgery for staff injured on the job.

Unique Solutions has gone through several rounds of fundraising, and its shareholders include Nova Scotia Business Inc. and members of the First Angel Network. The company last year raised $30 million in venture capital financing from Northwater Capital of Toronto. (Full disclosure: The principals of Entrevestor have a small investment in Unique Solutions.)