Recurate is a company that is powering the future of recommerce by building brands’ resale platforms with a focus on more traffic, sales, and sustainability. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Recurate CEO and co-founder Wilson Griffin to learn more about the company.
Formation Of Recurate
How did the idea for Recurate come together? Griffin said:
“Throughout my career, I’ve been focused on the intersection of apparel and waste reduction. Prior to Recurate, I spent five years at Gap driving toward the company’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction and waste diversion goals. That was gratifying work, and companies should strive to be more efficient with their resources. Through my work, I realized that I wasn’t able to address the problem of overproduction. Even if you manufacture products with fewer natural resources, you are still manufacturing an item that the world doesn’t really need. Instead, I wanted to focus on helping brands further monetize items that they already manufactured. Those resources have already been spent, so it’s now our responsibility to get as much value and time out of each item as possible.”
“In addition to the sustainability opportunity, there is a huge business opportunity for brands to capture sales and customers currently happening on eBay, FB Marketplace, Poshmark, and The RealReal. Millions of consumers are buying and selling pre-loved items every day. When Adam Siegel (Co-Founder) and I came together to found Recurate, the idea was that we could provide brands with what they’ve been missing out on–a way for them to meaningfully participate in the resale of their own goods while unlocking those products and consumer insights previously owned by third-party resellers. From there, it was building a technology-enabled service that brands could quickly implement with low overhead. Since this is a new channel for them, brands don’t necessarily have a “resale” team or the logistics setup in place to manage one-off pre-loved items. We can provide that for them.”
“The end goal is to give brands tools so that they aren’t solely dependent on manufacturing new products to be profitable. When brands benefit from the second or third life of their products, they are incentivized to make higher-quality products that can last through multiple uses.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Griffin explained:
“Recurate is a resale operating system that powers brand-specific marketplaces for our partners. Recurate offers a variety of resale models (peer-to-peer, in-store and online take-back, damaged returns, repairs, and upcycling) and leverages a direct integration with a brand’s e-commerce platform. That means brands collect the revenue from the sale and control all customer (both seller and buyer) data. We facilitate the entire experience for brands and end-users.”
“Sellers can list items for sale right from their purchase history, or our technology can match resale listings to an item in the brands’ catalog. Buyers are presented with more product detail than they would from a third party – including the original product photography and description sourced from the brand’s catalog. By bringing the resale experience in-house, brands now have data on resale buyers and their products on the secondhand market – which they can use for marketing, resource planning, design, and waste reduction decisions.”
Evolution Of Recurate’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Griffin noted:
“Our solution is constantly evolving to meet the needs of brands, so we can make pre-loved shopping just as flexible, seamless, and personalized as shopping new. We don’t want our resale technology to be siloed outside a brand’s larger e-commerce ecosystem. It is important that we can integrate with everything from inventory management systems to repair services and loyalty programs.”
“On the shopper side, we’ve built in features like advanced merchandising, favoriting, seller closets, “see similar” product suggestions and seller ratings. We first launched Recurate with a “peer-to-peer” model, but since then have expanded our offering to include other models like in-store trade in, repairs, and upcycled. Similar to the new purchase experience, resale needs to be ‘omnichannel’ so we’re meeting customers where they are, whether that be online, in-store, on social, etc.”
“From a seller’s perspective, we also want the listing experience to be as seamless as possible. Features like scan-to-list and Digital IDs can help make this process smoother.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Griffin cited:
“There have been so many milestones for our startup! From the first pre-loved item to selling millions of dollars of resale goods. For us, the most exciting milestones are when we launch a new brand partner. This year, we’ve had some exciting launches with customers like Christy Sports, Juicy Couture, and Moosejaw. We also have a few announcements coming in the next couple of months, including a partnership with luxury designer Mansur Gavriel.”
“Also, we recently announced the launch of our Complete ResaleOS, which brings together all of the resale ecosystem solutions. This includes our Returns Operations Network (our operational partners who take possession of items for grading, photography, resale fulfillment and recycling), our Returns Routing (which includes integrations with the major returns portals to route specified items to resale), and our Resale In-Take, which can import thousands of resale items instantly from brands’ own warehouses. All of this helps to streamline the multiple resale inventory workflows so our brand partners can scale their programs.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Griffin about customer success stories, he replied:
“Some of the greatest success stories for us are our brands really leaning into their resale programs–we have brands that have fundamentally changed the way they communicate with customers, and they have gotten super creative with how they’re messaging their program.”
“Peak Design for example, “blacks out” their main site on Earth Day, directing all of their shoppers to the resale site rather than shopping new. Not only did they see resale purchases increase 5x, they also saw an 11% increase in the purchase of full-priced products, which could still be purchased by closing out of the Earth Day window. The brand also sends out 1, 2, and 3-year “product purchase” anniversary emails, reminding their previous shoppers that if they’re no longer using that previously bought item, they can sell it on the resale marketplace and ‘trade up.’”
“We’ve also seen our brands leveraging resale to generate in-store traffic as well. 7 for All Mankind held an in-store trade-in event at 10 of their stores over a weekend and saw some of the highest volume and conversion days of the year. Clare V. did something similar, offering customers the opportunity to drop off items in-store in exchange for gift cards. They saw over half the gift cards issued were spent in the store that same day, with significant up spend.”
“More generally, our brands see resale as a huge driver of customer acquisition, lifetime value, and re-activation. It signals that they stand behind the quality and longevity of their products and that they want to reward their customers for keeping items in circulation.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Griffin concluded:
“When we started this company, our mission was to facilitate the recommerce for as many products as possible. So our goals are twofold: we want to help more brands tap into resale, and we want to continue to expand our suite of services so that our existing customers can grow resale as a portion of their overall business. Long term, we want to revolutionize the way that brands think about the products they manufacture. We see a future where the expectation is that an item will be sold 2, 3, or 4 times. That is what we are working toward.”
