Austin-based technology leader secures investment to meet skyrocketing demand for circular commerce for oversized items
FloorFound, the pioneer and leader in recommerce for oversized items, announced it has secured $10.5 million in Series A financing. The round was led by Next Coast Ventures and LiveOak Venture Partners with participation from previous investors, FlyBridge Capital Partners, Schematic Ventures and new investor Data Point Capital. The funding will be used to expand the company’s market presence in the U.S. and move into additional retail verticals such as appliances, mattresses and exercise equipment.
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The funding comes at a time of explosive growth as retailers and brands embrace FloorFound’s end-to-end recommerce solution that streamlines the recovery and resale of returned, lightly used and open-box items. The company, which was recently named to Fast Company’s 2022 list of World Changing Ideas, debuted its hosted platform and marketplace for oversized items in February 2021. Since that time, it has more than doubled its recommerce sales each quarter on average and seen a 5x increase in its client base.
FloorFound currently serves innovative furniture brands including Inside Weather, Floyd, Burrow, Joybird, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Living Spaces, Outer, Interior Define, Sabai, Neighbor, Modsy, Castlery, Million Dollar Baby, Kathy Kuo and more. Together with its clients, FloorFound has helped keep almost 450,000 pounds of furniture in circulation and out of landfills to date.
“Consumer demand for sustainability, coupled with a strained supply chain and growing inflation, has pushed recommerce and resale to the forefront of retail, ” said Chris Richter, founder and CEO of FloorFound. “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. With this new funding round, we are bringing this sustainable model to more brands and shoppers around the globe, driving business forward while helping protect the planet.”
“FloorFound sits at the perfect intersection of the two most transformative trends in retail: sustainability and supply chain resilience,” said Tom Ball, Founder & Managing Partner, Next Coast Ventures, who joined the FloorFound Board of Directors with this round. “Chris and his team have spent the past 25 years in eCommerce and retail operations, specifically supply chain, and they have the unique knowledge necessary to create the right business model and value to take oversized recommerce mainstream.”
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Recommerce: Sustainable, Affordable, Available
Recommerce offers a sustainable alternative to new item manufacturing and shipping, with lower cost items and faster availability for shoppers. More than 90 percent of U.S. consumers reported buying resale items in a 2021 FloorFound survey, and research from First Insights and the Wharton School indicates 83 percent of consumers across all generations who have purchased secondhand products will continue to do so compared to only 17 percent in 2019. This broad consumer support has led to projections that U.S. resale is set to grow more than 150 percent to top $330 billion by 2030, according to Mercari and GlobalData.
However, without reverse logistics processes to handle the return and resale of large items, recommerce programs have historically been out of reach and unavailable for oversized products, until now.
With FloorFound’s end-to-end recommerce solution, retailers are able to transform returned and open-box merchandise into a new, repeatable and sustainable source of inventory and revenue. The FloorFound technology and team manage the process from pickup of the item being returned, to inspection and warehousing of the item, to selling and delivering it to its new owner. Retailers using FloorFound are not only able to support circularity goals and reduce waste (the EPA estimates 10 million tons of furniture end up in landfill each year) – but also provide consumers with compelling high-quality items that ship quickly and at a discount.
Real Results with Recommerce
FloorFound has architected every aspect of its end-to-end platform to meet and exceed both sellers’ requirements and consumers’ expectations. The solution includes a destination marketplace (FloorFound.store), localized reverse logistics, processing and inspection capabilities, merchandising and pricing intelligence. FloorFound’s solution also includes a robust fulfillment network of more than 40 warehouse hubs, planned to triple in 2022, and 4 major 3PL partnerships.
Retailers using FloorFound are up and running within weeks and see immediate ROI by fueling resale shopping, delivery and customer support experiences that are on par, or exceed, new furniture purchases. Explains Benjamin Parsa, CEO of Inside Weather, “Thanks to FloorFound, Inside Weather is able to encourage reuse of the products we make by connecting our high-quality, timeless pieces with new owners.”
FloorFound client Floyd has seen 68% average gross recovery from returned items included in its Full Cycle recommerce program. Over 75% of customers on the branded storefront are new to Floyd, and 25% of these customers have already returned and purchased brand-new items from Floyd.
