Lauryn Vaughn was a commerce student at the University of Calgary when she got an opportunity to intern with the designer Paul Hardy. As a result, she became more acquainted with the inner workings of retail, from procuring supplies to selling goods.
After a brief period living in Paris, she returned to Canada, where her aunt worked in a consignment store in Calgary. This gave her the idea to bring consignment shopping to a wider market by taking it online. So she started building her first online luxury consignment retailer company from her basement while working full-time at an insurance company.
In 2015, she launched her company, The Upside, with her aunt as head of retail. To start her company, she first had to find products. So she sourced from her friends over a period of six months, gathering designer clothing and accessories that they were ready to resell.
They offered resellers up to 80 percent back on an item’s sale price. After a year and a half, Lauryn led her business to become financially stable. In 2020, they took over a 427-square-metre space in Calgary and rebranded to The Revente.
Today, they are Canada’s largest online reseller of authenticated designer goods.
Re-Imagining Retail
Lauryn soon realized that when customers knew what they could receive in exchange for a product before they even bought it, she could encourage more people to resell their products and encourage manufacturers to participate in resale.
From this concept, she launched her next venture, ReUpp Technology.
To make this idea a reality, they introduced software that enables buyers to see the price at which they can exchange an item directly on a retailer’s website. In addition, ReUpp notifies them of their buy-back offer within a year if they decide to “lock in” the guaranteed buy-back price, shown beside the retail price at the point of sale.
They receive money through ReUpp or a site credit from the company they first purchased. Then they sell the item on sites like The Revente and eBay on behalf of the brands, sharing a percentage of the sale proceeds with those marketplaces.
ReUpp’s revenue comes from the platform fees they receive from brands and their reselling revenues.
Revolutionizing Retail
ReUpp is a technology company with an API integration that promises a buy-back for eligible items. In addition, they allow you to shop online guilt-free with any of their partners to increase consumer, retailer, and brand access to the circular economy.
They offer an end-to-end circular solution that instantly enhances your sustainability mandates. In addition, their trade-in solutions emphasize re-commerce, recycling, and dead stock.
ReUpp runs all reverse logistics upon trade-in and profit shares back to you, making circularity seamless. In addition, they embed themselves at the point of sale to let customers know how much cash or site credit they can trade in their purchase when they’re ready.
ReUpp offers a customer journey where customers browse an e-commerce site and see ReUpp trade-in offers. They purchase, then ReUpp re-engages them with offer reminders through Email and SMS.
When ready to trade in, the customer completes the 3-step ReUpp process. ReUpp handles the re-commerce, recycling or dead stock logistics, and profit shares back to you. Finally, the customer ships for free and gets cash or site credit.
ReUpp Technology has a robust partner network in refurbishing, reverse logistics, recertification, and resale and is well-developed in several industry verticals with an emphasis on clothes, electronics, and furniture.
Redefining Retail
Lauryn Vaughn’s career has been an internalization of the word “consignment,” where she has understood that it is not a dirty word but a word with immense possibilities. Consignment has evolved from meaning that people did it because they couldn’t afford it to meaning that it is an environmentally friendly and sustainable practice.
Over the years, she has realized that consumer perception has shifted and the resale clothing market is growing rapidly in the North American economy. Today, Lauryn’s business has gone live with Canadian labels like Smythe, and she has investors from Saks Fifth Avenue and Gap.
They were the recipient of the Audience Choice start-up award at Shoptalk 2022. With these recognitions, they strive to continue building on their momentum after raising $750,000 in pre-seed funding last year.
ReUpp Technology creates a resale economy at the time of the first purchase by partnering with retailers to offer a guaranteed buy-back. For more information, visit their website at https://www.reupp.co/.
Small businesses are exploring the possibilities of thrifting, reselling, and restyling in the market and environment. To read more about these innovative business ideas, subscribe to CanadianSME Small Business Magazine https://lnkd.in/dbqmSKN. For the latest updates, visit our Twitter page at @canadian_sme.
