Croissant – a fintech platform with a mission to empower intentional commerce – recently launched with $24 million in seed funding from renowned investors, including Portage and KKR co-founders George Roberts and Henry Kravis. The initial funding was used to accelerate Croissant’s MVP launch via a best-in-class founding team led by Co-Founder and CEO John Howard (formerly of KKR), Co-Founder and CTO John Klose (Amazon, PayPal), and Head of Product Vrishti Mongia (Meta, Moda Operandi).
The company integrates into merchants’ existing shopping experiences and offers customers a guaranteed buyback value at checkout, boosting conversion and average order value. And Croissant’s data science and AI tooling generate the guaranteed buyback values offered to customers, and Croissant fulfills those guarantees.
Post-purchase items become liquid assets within the customers’ Croissant accounts that they can later sell with one click. After customers have sold their items, they are returned to merchants with new funds to power future purchases, increasing retention rates and lifetime value.
Created partially in response to consumer debt-focused offerings, Croissant transforms the shopping mindset from credit-fueled consumption to asset ownership, amplifying purchasing power and providing real financial empowerment for users, resulting in higher conversion, average order value, and customer retention. When users later elect to sell, the company deploys its exclusive multiple listing technology to handle the tedious resale process within the existing secondhand ecosystem without merchants or customers requiring involvement.
Along with Portage, Roberts, and Kravis, significant investors in Croissant include Third Prime, BoxGroup, 25madison, and Twelve Below. Croissant’s advisory board of industry leaders includes Rent the Runway Co-Founder and Board Member Jennifer Fleiss; former Chief Merchandising Officer of Intermix Divya Mathur; Lara Meiland-Shaw, a luxury fashion veteran with over 20 years of experience at brands like Louis Vuitton, Moncler, and Saks Fifth Avenue; and Homer and Outdoor Voices Founding Partner Andrew Parietti.
KEY QUOTES:
“Over the past decade, we’ve seen immense changes happen at e-commerce point of sale. But rapidly evolving consumer behavior and expectations mean it’s no longer enough for merchants to have a seamless credit card or mobile wallet experience; they need to activate consumer psychology around the purchase decision in empowering, impactful, and effortless ways to truly stand out. Croissant allows merchants to increase sales, consumers to buy more and better, and both to enjoy the benefits of resale without doing any reselling whatsoever. Bottom line – Croissant contributes to a richer, more vibrant commerce experience for everybody.”
— John Howard
“Only a small percentage of resellable fashion is transacted globally each year, but it’s still a $130 billion market that is rapidly growing. To date, retailers are seeing little to no benefit from this ongoing boom. Croissant enables them to harness the interest in and growth of resale to drive new full-price sales with minimal integration and no need to transact within the secondhand ecosystem themselves.”
— Stephanie Choo, Partner at Portage
