If you order a piece of furniture online, and it arrives in the wrong color or model, many companies — especially the younger, direct-to-consumer startups popular on social media — do not have the resources to arrange for a return. The customer might get their money back, or they might not, but either way, the company is losing out on the possibility of giving that piece of furniture a new life.
“Recommerce” — the idea of reselling returned, lightly used or unboxed items — is a hot topic in the tech and retail worlds these days, as the market has adapted to millennials and Gen Z consumers’ interest in environmental sustainability, as well as their desire to get high-quality items at a discounted price.
By 2030, the U.S. resale market is projected to grow more than 150 percent to $353.9 billion, according to Mercari and GlobalData.
Austin startup FloorFound is helping those direct-to-consumer furniture companies resell returned, lightly used or unboxed items without any further effort on the retailer’s behalf. FloorFound picks up the product, inspects it, stocks it at a warehouse and then sells and delivers it to its new owner. The startup splits the commission with the retailer.
FloorFound sells the items through its resale marketplace at floorfound.store. It also creates retailer-branded marketplaces that those retailers can link to on their websites.
The company’s client list includes direct-to-consumer furniture brands such as Inside Weather, Floyd, Burrow and Joybird, but it plans to expand its client base to include other oversized goods, such as mattresses and exercise equipment. FloorFound has also signed some enterprise retailers that it cannot yet name.
To help scale its business to the next level, FloorFound announced Thursday that it raised $10.5 million in fresh funding.
Since raising its $4 million seed round more than a year ago, FloorFound has doubled its team from 11 to 22 people, according to the company. With the new Series A round, it plans to once again double its team to more than 40.
FloorFound has access to 43 warehouses, and with the additional funding, it plans to triple its warehouse hubs. Although FloorFound is already a national platform, the additional warehouse space will allow the company to provide faster, cheaper shipping to customers. The expansion will also enable FloorFound to offer an option for customers to buy an item online and pick it up at a warehouse near their house.
Together with its clients, FloorFound says it has helped keep almost 450,000 pounds of furniture in circulation and out of landfills.
“Consumer demand for sustainability, coupled with a strained supply chain and growing inflation, has pushed recommerce and resale to the forefront of retail,” FloorFound founder and CEO Chris Richter said in a statement. “FloorFound’s solution cuts through the complexities that have made resale prohibitively difficult for oversized items and allows brands to quickly launch robust, full-scale recommerce programs that meet and exceed consumer expectations.”
The funding round was co-led by Next Coast Ventures and LiveOak Venture Partners. Previous investors FlyBridge Capital Partners and Schematic Ventures also joined the round, along with new investor Data Point Capital.
