Oly Platform (Techstars 24)

Excited to be pitching today at Women's Forum for the Economy & Society our work at Oly Platform (Techstars 24) and how we are automating second-hand commerce to enable the circular economy to grow! 🌞 Please come say hi if you’re here today or tomorrow!

🎉 We’re thrilled to announce that Oly Platform (Techstars 24) won 1st Prize for Circular Business Strategy at this year’s summit organized by Social Nest Foundation and The Gap in Between in Valencia ( motherland 🇪🇸)! Nearly a year after our acceleration with Techstars San Francisco , it's been a wild ride🎢, but we’re incredibly grateful for this recognition from a fantastic panel of judges who share our vision of building the infrastructure needed to grow the second-hand economy profitably and sustainably through Oly Platform (Techstars 24). It was also inspiring to meet startups from around the world promoting innovative solutions for a less wasteful future. Shoutout to the category winners: - VSL Labs using Gen AI for sign language - ARAIS.IO: democratizing access to valuable data for smarter city planning - Crowmie : democratizing investments in sustainable energy - BettaFish: global winner, turning seaweed into seafood! Thanks Marta del Castillo, Stephanie M. Checo Rijo, Carmen Blanc Vázquez & the rest of the team for the amazing organisation. Back to Paris with so much energy and excitement for what’s next! 🧚🏼♀️

Time is the only limited resource in life. As a founder I'm very careful to make sure I'm investing my time and not wasting it. Focusing only in things that will drive the business forward. (Like this linkedin post of course. :) ) Of course I'm not perfect, but it's something I pay a lot of attention to. I therefore, want to thank Remi Rivas for convincing me last minute to participate and carve sometime on the week-end to participate on the #WE4G Challenge which has enabled us to get 4 month of free incubation at Incubateur HEC Paris and to pitch Oly Platform (Techstars 24) at the Women's Forum for the Economy & Society (A Publicis Groupe company). Congratulations to all the other female-founded startups striving to create a more sustainable world in every sense. Super excited to be part of such empowered female founders. Thanks to all the organizers for the generous prize that will empower all of us to reach our goals and contribute to a more sustainable world Women's Forum for the Economy & Society (A Publicis Groupe company) Incubateur HEC Paris Bank of America Business Bredin Prat

Clothes connect people. They allow you to express yourself and feel a sense of connection with your "tribe"—friends, colleagues, and community. We categorize people by how they present themselves, not necessarily by whether they're wearing designer clothes, but by their level of personal hygiene, cleanliness of their clothes, posture, etc. Fast fashion has allowed low-income consumers to feel part of the mainstream, giving them a sense of belonging and "coolness." This reality is what has made fast fashion so successful. However, most of its impact is negative. A few of the detrimental issues include abusive working conditions for a majority female workforce, creation of toxic residues in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), and a business model that thrives on people being constantly dissatisfied with what they have, pushing them to buy more. As this brilliant SNL parody describes, most people won't stop buying hyper fast fashion despite its well-documented harms. Whether this is good or bad isn't for me to judge; I'm here to propose solutions. The key takeaway is that people will continue to seek connection and consume fashion, and this shouldn't be limited to higher-income individuals. We need solutions to make ethical fashion available at more accessible price points. So what are these solutions? In my opinion there are 2: 1/ SECOND-HAND ( of course ! .. ) Displacing a first-hand item purchase with a second-hand one can reduce the carbon emission of your purchase by up to 44% (Thredup report) . Second-hand makes it more accesible to buy ethical brands that might have a higher price-point (because let’s face it production is expensive). Resale alows consumers to stay on trend while reducing the demand for new items. There are a multitude of places to buy quality products at accesible prices : - - Directly from brands and retailers: Brands and retailers are encouraging their community to resell used items. Latest collab was Mytheresa’ x Vestiaire Collective. But many brands have launched resale in the past years such as ba&sh, SMCP – Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot, Fursac, Tara Jarmon Officiel etc. -- From consignment stores : ORMAIN Personal Seller Paris Designer Revival etc - From P2P platforms: eBay TikTok Shop Vinted Vestiaire Collective Poshmark 2/ RENTAL A great option for accessing a more expensive item at a fraction of the price, using it a few times, and then returning it. This is especially useful when you need an outfit for a "one-time" event. Through companies such as UNE ROBE UN SOIR, By Rotation, HURR, Rent The Runway and many more. Any brand out there thinking about transitioning to a more circular business model and wanting to explore solutions —send me a DM! ---- Follow my account for more posts on how our current economy is transforming to be more circular and how at Oly Platform (Techstars 24) we're building the platform to power collaboration among all actors!

Walmart entered the $32B US resale market. Walmart launched a resale website supplied by ThredUp with brands like: Nike, Michael Kors, Coach With more places offering fashion resale 2 things are happening for recommerce businesses and marketplaces. 1/ There's more competition to attract fashion resale buyers to your own website, therefore CAC going up. 2/ Selling across different channels and diversifying your revenue streams becomes a requirement. As the co-founder of FASHIONPHILE Ben Hemminger puts it: “We can capture a certain amount of market share in our own direct-to-consumer [platform] but there’s so much more opportunity when you expand into other channels.” However expanding to other resale channels can proof challenging, as there are no data standards in second-hand. Every marketplace has its own taxonomy, creating very complex data mappings and enrichment required specifically for second-hand items, and generic feed aggregators aren't adapted. At Oly Platform (Techstars 24) we're specialised in this resale taxonomy transformation and data enrichment. Some of our clients have increased x5 their GMV when switching to Oly Platform (Techstars 24). If you're a brand or a retailer thinking about launching resale or wanting to increase your sell-through send me a message, happy to share more about our technology and findings.

eBay is shaking up the resale game! They've teamed up with over 80 leading brands, introducing a game-changing feature where clients can simply scan a tag to create a product listing with a 'resell on eBay' button.  Imagine, listing an item on their platform with just a scan! While uploading photos is still needed, this innovation is a massive leap forward, potentially propelling eBay ahead in capturing direct consumer supply. At Oly Platform (Techstars 24) we're excited to see the recommerce ecosystem grow and become more sophisticated. We look forward to partner with more marketplaces and recommerce businesses to help them simplify their data exchange workflows.

Thanks BeAngels , BECI, Incubateur HEC Paris and everybody involved for making this amazing event possible

Happy Friday - with this amazing customer review from Prime Luxury Outfit ! Startups are a continuous roller coaster, but knowing we're helping sustainable businesses grow on their daily operations is what energizes our team, with Marion Tessier George Mathews and the rest of our Oly Platform (Techstars 24) team, to continue to push forward - the future of commerce belongs to resale businesses ♻ 💃

If there's one thing that TikTok excels at, it's virality and trend propagation, and this week, TikTok launched resale! With none other than some of the top luxury resale businesses in our UK Oly community: Luxe Collective Fashion, Sign of the Times, among other UK sellers. This could be a great strategy in TikTok Shop rebranding as a destination for high-end items. TikTok has been criticized for having too many low-value items, so they are trying to combat this by increasing their seller fee to 8% to deter those cheaper mass-market retailers, as well as being able to sell these luxury brands without their permission. The integration of resale into TikTok and mainstream is great news; however, the technology to integrate these single SKU catalogs into TikTok does seem to be experiencing some bugs, which at Oly Platform (Techstars 24) we're excited to help solve. One thing seems to be clear: the power of social media to accelerate trends and consumer behavior. And I do think the fact that TikTok is putting emphasis on this will really accelerate the adoption of the already growing fashion resale market. I guess it will be better to have tiktokers doing "resale hauls", rather than "shein hauls" . But it also begs the question if the whole consumption rate of fashion should be lowered? What do you think? Link to article in the first comment.

Thanks to everybody that came yesterday to watch all the pitches from the inaugural cohort of Techstars Future of Ecommerce powered by eBay. I feel truly so so lucky to be part of the amazing Techstars community of like-minded and diverse founders that inspire me everyday to be better. I could mention so many people, but special thank you to Neal Sales-Griffin, who's one of the most upright people ever and truly leads by example. Thanks for investing in both Marion Tessier and I ! Let's keep going! Check them out Clutch Madison Long ChatGenie Ragde Falcis Ecomtent Max Sinclair Timur Luguev GolferX Andrew Ajax Jelt Alejandro Nieto Silva Juan Domínguez del Corral Okkular Abhishek Vohra Ashwin Rao Oly Paula Menéndez Pausa Marion Tessier Onboardbase  Karlista Dante Lex Okoh Purposely.ai Alex Kennedy Unbuilt Matt Kennedy Sara Noyes WorkDone Inc. Joseph Rogers