Editor's note: This is one of 10 companies profiled by DC Inno for its annual Startups to Watch feature. Go here to see all of this year's honorees and learn more about the young, promising companies poised to shake up the region's innovation community.
About the company: Aravenda, founded in 2018 by Carolyn Thompson and Randy Howard, is a business-to-business software-as-a-service startup based in Fairfax. The company has a team of six full-time employees working to shake up the resale market, a rapidly growing segment of the larger retail industry. The company’s online marketplaces, managed and run by small businesses or commercial enterprise customers via Aravenda’s software, can include items that might be found in resale stores or estate sales. Aravenda’s focus also extends to the secondary market in corporate supply chains, a market estimated to be even larger than traditional retail resale, with analysts predicting it to exceed $120 billion by 2024. Aravenda has customers in more than 10 countries and actively collaborates with industry giants such as Shopify, Clover and Lightspeed. With a focus on resale, Aravenda also works to lower carbon emissions. Every transaction facilitated by Aravenda on its marketplace contributes to reducing 3.4 pounds of emissions for every pound of items sold on the platform. Aravenda’s most recent funding round was in 2022, and it’s already generating revenue via the fees it charges resellers for using its consignment software services.
Why we’re watching: Aravenda is set to launch a marketplace application that allows users to shop from the entire inventory of one of the marketplace’s sellers worldwide, allowing sustainable-minded shoppers to find unique items from a preferred merchant. Aravenda is also poised to aid in climate change emission reduction efforts. By using its platform, a company can measure its respective impact of carbon neutrality in real-time. The partnerships it forms with commercial and nonprofit organizations allow Aravenda to monitor the movement of excess supplies, furniture and goods. Its software ensures this impact is trackable and reportable toward carbon neutrality goals.
Quotable: “Continuing our growth by leading technology innovation in this fast-growing space. We are the first resale software to be rolling out AI use cases to streamline processes unique to resale, which will continue to support our expansion.” — Carolyn Thompson, CEO
The basics
- Founders: Carolyn Thompson, CEO; Randy Howard, vice president of IT and customer success
- Founded: 2018
- Headquarters: Fairfax
- Full-time employees: 6
- Total funding: $1.6 million
- Annual revenue: Declined to disclose