Ever wish your clothes were more liquid?
Not liquid as in wet, but as in a good that can be easily turned into cash.
Archive Resale Inc. has partnered with over 30 brands like The North Face and Oscar de la Renta, building e-commerce websites and working with logistic providers so the clothing companies buy back used items from customers.
"Once you create a market like this, and you show liquidity in your products to your customer base as a brand, you actually experience that people are more willing to buy your product, because they know there's somewhere for it to go when they're done with it," said Ryan Rowe, co-founder and chief technology officer of Archive. "It sort of changes the psychology into a more circular one for customers."
The San Francisco startup recently raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Fernbrook Capital, G9 Ventures. Archive has raised a total of $24 million.
Archive is taking a different strategy than other resale e-commerce sites like ThreadUp, which operates its own marketplace of a variety of brands. Instead, Archive partners with brands directly and for each one creates an individual marketplace.
Customers trading in their gently used clothing to Archive's brand partners typically get 40-60% of the purchase price back depending on the item. Archive then takes a commission from the brand off the resale.
"The resale market is expected to grow to over $200 billion in the next few years and so brands are watching that growth and want a part of it," said Emily Gittins, co-founder and CEO of Archive. "They've seen their customers go to third party sites and they are questioning whether they should own a part of that."
The company has 35 employees with offices in New York and San Francisco and plans to use the new funding for international expansion.
