RECURATE

Adam Siegel and Chloe Sonnet founded Recurate in New York in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. The insight came from watching the resale market explode — ThredUp, Poshmark, and The RealReal were all proving that consumers wanted pre-owned fashion.

But every time a customer went to resell a Madewell jacket on Poshmark, Madewell lost the transaction, lost the data, and lost the customer relationship. Siegel and Sonnet built white-label resale technology so brands could run their own in-house resale programs, branded as their own, powered by Recurate behind the scenes.

Instead of Madewell customers going to Poshmark, they'd go to a Madewell-branded 'Pre-Loved' section on Madewell's own site. The brand keeps the customer.

Recurate makes the infrastructure.

B2B SaaS plus transaction fees. Brands pay a monthly software fee for access to Recurate's resale platform.

When peer-to-peer transactions happen inside the brand's resale program, Recurate also takes a percentage of each sale. The platform handles peer-to-peer logistics coordination, payments, and customer-facing experience — all branded as the client.

Brands get the customer data, the relationship, and the sustainability story. Recurate gets recurring SaaS revenue plus transaction upside as brands scale their resale programs.

White-label peer-to-peer resale marketplace (fully branded as the client). Native integrations with Shopify and major e-commerce platforms.

Peer-to-peer shipping coordination and label generation. An analytics dashboard for brands to track resale program performance, customer acquisition, and revenue contribution.

Recurate targeted mid-to-premium fashion brands that were already fielding sustainability questions from customers. Their go-to-market pitch was direct: your customers want to resell your products — you should own that relationship instead of donating it to a competitor's platform.

They signed brands including Madewell, Vince, Peter Millar, and Hunter Boots. Each partnership became a reference case for the next.

They raised a $2.4 million seed round in 2021, followed by an $18 million Series A in 2022 led by 14W Ventures — a fashion and retail-focused fund that brought relevant industry connections alongside capital.

Timing and budget prioritization. Between 2022 and 2024, many fashion brands faced pressure to cut technology spending as consumer discretionary weakened.

Recurate had to prove that resale programs generated measurable incremental revenue and new customers — not just sustainability PR. They also compete directly with Archive, a similar white-label resale infrastructure company, which means the market for brand-owned resale programs has multiple funded competitors fighting for the same customer base.

14W Ventures, Collaborative Fund