With a strong start to 2020, Denver-based child gear recommerce startup Good Buy Gear was ready to raise funds to bolster its growth earlier this year.
“We had a board meeting at the beginning of March, we had some great traction and growth at the beginning of the year with national retailers. On March 5 we had that board meeting and said let’s go fundraise,” co-founder and CEO Kristin Langenfeld told Colorado Inno.
Then, Covid-19 hit and the company was forced to reassess its position with an uncertain future ahead.
“We said, ‘OK, never mind, let’s conserve cash,’” Langenfeld said.
The company cut operating expenses by 40 percent, closed its warehouses to customers and doubled-down on its recommerce platform. And, with those decisions, business boomed.
Since March, the company’s revenue has increased by four times and Good Buy Gear’s supply of secondhand items has grown as people declutter their homes.
Good Buy Gear is a marketplace for secondhand children’s gear and accessories, like strollers, jumpers, toys and much more. The startup picks up used items from parents looking to sell their children’s accessories, checks them for safety and quality and stores them in the company’s warehouse.
From there, Good Buy Gear prices the items and lists them on its website for sale. Sellers receive a portion of the profits, based on the sale price of the item.
With that recent growth at its back, Langenfeld said the company made the decision to move forward with funding at the beginning of July.
After plenty of Zoom meetings with interested investors, Good Buy Gear closed a $6 million Series A round this week to grow its product and team and fuel expansion efforts. Revolution Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors Access Venture Partners and Relay Ventures.
This funding follows a $2 million round raised in March 2019 led by Atlanta’s Be Curious Partners, a firm focused on reinventing parenthood through technology.
Good Buy Gear currently has a full-time team of 11 and is looking to add five employees across multiple departments in the next few months.
The round will also be used to further build out Good Buy Gear’s marketplace, as it looks to customize the shopping experience for each user.
“The interesting thing about the market that we’re in, is that kids grow and don’t need their things for very long,” Langenfeld said.
With that in mind, Good Buy Gear is tailoring its platform to guide parents through the shopping cycles of their child’s life.
When a child grows out of a crib, the company will buy it back and offer parents the next thing they need for their growing child. When they’re done with that, Good Buy Gear will once again be ready to buy it back.
“Our goal is to be the go-to place [for parents] to find everything they need when they need it and to get rid of it when they don’t need it,” she said.
The final piece of this funding round will be to grow Good Buy Gear into additional markets. The company currently operates in Denver and Dallas, and through large retail partnerships hopes to expand into an east coast market in the near future.
