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Secondhand clothing has exploded as a category over the past couple of decades . A London startup that ’s built a first - of - its - kind political program to better how this very fragmented industry control is now announce funding to duplicate down on the opportunity .
Fleek , an online market place that connects secondhand habiliment wholesalers with those that sell it at retail , has raised $ 20.4 million ( $ 14.8 million Series A and $ 5.6 million seed announcing for the first clock time today ) to continue expanding its platform . To date , Fleek enjoin it has work with some 10,000 resellers and retailers from 70 countries , moving 2.5 million item of secondhand wearing apparel from 1,000 sweeping suppliers .
The investiture comes from an impressive list of backers : HV Capital is contribute the beat , while Andreessen Horowitz ( which moderate the inauguration ’s come round ) and gun Y Combinator ( where Fleek was a part of the Winter 2022 mountain ) are participating . Individual backers in the rhythm include Shopify Chief Executive Harley Finkelstein , Depop ’s ex-husband - CEO Maria Raga , and Postmates ’ CTO Sean Plaice .
Fleek was founded by friends Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal follow a very verbatim grievance from a future in - police .
It was 2021 , and the mother of Agarwal ’s then - lady friend , who sell wearing apparel on secondhand social commerce site Poshmark ( now owned by Naver ) , was talking about source problem due to render chain of mountains issues at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic . Separately , Arora , fresh out of an MBA at Cambridge , was live on close to Brick Lane in London , a major destination for used dress buyers , and he went over there to investigate what things were like .
He catch to chatter with a vintage dress shop manager . Used - clothing wholesalers , the manager told him , attend as funnels for sourcing clothing , provide many secondhand stores with fund . These wholesalers were offline , so the retailer tended to travel to root goods from the wholesalers in person , pluck through rack , going “ head down , frig around up , ” in the words of Arora , Fleek ’s CEO .
That practice became impossible with travel restrictions , yet what this retail merchant had notice was that a fistful of the wholesaler had started showing off their goods on Instagram , and they were negotiating ad hoc over video shout .
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That gave Arora and Agarwal , a software engineer who antecedently solve at Google , their inspiration . They would ramp up a market to make it easier for any wholesaler to betray online , and for any retailer to buy that fashion . Make the experience consistent for everyone on both sides of the table and take a snub on the payment for bring home the bacon the service .
Fleek ’s commission , Agarwal tell , count on the amount and quality of goodness being sell : its cut comes out of the payments that purchaser are paying to the jobber .
And then , as they begin to look into who these offline wholesalers actually were , it feel like fate .
“ It turned out that the zep - continent is one of the biggest exporters and importers of used apparel , ” Arora said . “ Sanket and I both grew up in India . We speak the speech . That really help us plug into with these middleman . ”
From basic necessity to virtuous circles and vintage vibes
It was n’t that long ago that secondhand wearable was mainly the area of lower - income consumers : Polemonium van-bruntiae shops and donation compass point were pillar for collect those point and redistributing them to those who needed them most and far … sometimes very far . The whole process of intake and marketing was quite parallel .
Over the years , the concept has had a major makeover , particularly in more break economies , where secondhand clothing — sometimes loftily refer to as “ vintage ” — has come into its own . Besides those who ca n’t spend a lot or just want to preserve money , there are shoppers who can afford to bribe new clothes , but they prefer for secondhand to assert their individuality in a sea of mass - market commodity . Or they are buy used to tap into the circular economy and virtuously reduce waste .
For those of us on the watch for a adamant - in - the - rough bargain , prices may not be much different than new , and in many case , much higher . And the number of places sell used clothes has ballooned . Charity shops now compete with more curated used shop , and even major chains like Urban Outfitters and high - ending gamy - street dress shop are lean into the vintage vibe .
Alongside this has been aboom of online sellersacross eBay , Vinted , Poshmark , ThredUp , The RealReal , Depop , Instagram , TikTok , and many more . Used clothing now draw up 10 % of all wearable sales , according to a survey fromGlobalDataand ThredUp .
The ECDB , a specialiser e - commerce information analytics house , estimates that 68%of all Gen Z and millennial consumer in the U.K. ( a big market for time of origin ) buy at least one used item in the last year .
Fleek has customers all around the worldly concern bribe goods from its sellers , but accord to Arora , the big suppliers are not individuals who donate their clothes to Jacob’s ladder , but wholesalers , who in this case are very large warehouses that are the ultimate collectors and distributors of those item .
The wholesalers that Fleek tends to mold with are in countries like Pakistan , India , and Dubai , and they serve both the modernize world ( still major customers for used clothes ) and the germinate world ( where someone with a bigger wallet might pay as much or perhaps more for a great couplet of used Levi ’s over a new dyad ) .
When I speak to Arora and Agarwal the other day , they were respectively in Pakistan and India chitchat suppliers , and they read that typically these wholesalers can treat — take in , sort , mend , clean up , and send out — up to 400,000 kg of clothing in a single day . That sounds disorderly , but that ’s what makes Fleek so interesting : Go to the site and you ’ll see extreme organization , where those hundreds of K of kilos can be grease one’s palms by weight , or by brand , panache , sizing , cloth , and more .
As well as doing the hard workplace of bring monolithic , physical businesses online for the first sentence , Fleek is also whirl up technology for those further along that journeying .
It already offer prognosticative analytics to customers to serve them forecast different trends . ( sure as shooting this has to be programmed to just tell buyers to seek things popular 20 and 40 years antecedently . ) You could think more AI tooling to help with quality control condition and to better safeguard against counterfeiting , something the two admit is a huge trouble in the industry that they want to help barricade .
Another area it will likely arise more functionality is in race up logistics around purchasing , merchant vessels , and receiving , particularly around wholesalers who are being positively reviewed by buyers , said Agarwal .
“ We desire to bring on more buyers , take on more sellers , and build technology to preserve gift these enterpriser on both side of the marketplace , ” he said .
