Fleek, a marketplace for wholesale second-hand clothes, sews up $20M
Fleek, an online marketplace that connects second-hand clothing wholesalers with those who sell it at retail, has raised a $20.4 million Series A.
Second-hand clothing has exploded as a category over the past couple of decades. A London startup that’s built a first-of-its-kind platform to improve how this very fragmented industry operates is now announcing funding to double down on the opportunity.
Fleek, an online marketplace that connects second-hand clothing wholesalers with those who sell it at retail, has raised a $20.4 million Series A to continue expanding its platform. To date, Fleek says it has worked with some 10,000 resellers and retailers from 70 countries, moving 2.5 million items of second-hand clothes from 1,000 wholesale suppliers.
The investment comes from an impressive list of backers: HV Capital is leading the round, while Andreesen Horowitz (which led the startup’s seed round) and accelerator Y Combinator (where Fleek was a part of the Winter 2022 batch) are participating. Individual backers in the round include Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, Depop’s ex-CEO Maria Raga, and Postmates’ CTO Sean Plaice.
Fleek was founded by friends Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal following a very direct grievance from a future in-law.
It was 2021, and the mother of Agarwal’s then-girlfriend, who sold clothes on second-hand social commerce site Poshmark (now owned by Naver), was talking about sourcing problems due to supply chain issues at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Separately, Arora, fresh out of an MBA at Cambridge, was living close to Brick Lane in London, a major destination for second-hand clothes buyers, and he went over there to investigate what things were like.
Article
I cannot believe what I'm reading. Second hand clothes generate that much millions. I see it's really about strategy any business can grow if the right model is in place