Beni Makes Secondhand Shopping Seamless
Beni is on a mission to reduce carbon emissions from the clothing industry by expanding secondhand clothing sales.
Beni reduces carbon emissions from the clothing industry through its easy-to-use browser extension (available on Chrome & Safari). The company is augmenting online shopping experiences by seamlessly surfacing re-sale items identical or similar to what you’re looking at on a retailer’s website.
I spoke with Co-founder & CEO, Sarah Pinner, about her startup journey so far, passion for the climate, and Beni’s success.
Jacob Sheldon: What does Beni do?
Sarah Pinner: Beni's goal is to make resale the new norm. Our free browser extension helps you easily find and buy second-hand clothes online. You can shop on any brand’s website, such as Nike.com, and find a pair of shoes you like. Then, the Beni browser extension will show you where that shoe exists secondhand online. We partner with about 40 resale marketplaces, including Poshmark, eBay, and The RealReal, to aggregate the entire resale world and bring it directly to your browser.
Jacob: Why did you choose a browser extension instead of another way to do this?
Sarah: The browser extension came out of the core insight that started Beni. I had been talking to people, and they would say something like, "I know I should buy secondhand, but I just don't." I was intrigued by the fact that people clearly understood the value of secondhand but still weren’t actually buying secondhand. They're like, "Yeah, it's cheaper and more sustainable, but I don't want to scroll on eBay for three hours. I don't want to open up 20 tabs, and just generally speaking, I don't want to learn a new way of shopping." We refer to this shopper as the “aspirational secondhand shopper”, somebody who is open to resale but not yet doing it. Instead of trying to pull them into resale, the browser extension allows us to bring resale to them and integrate it into their existing clothes shopping.
Jacob: It makes sense from a user perspective, but are you concerned about retail companies blocking Beni from being used on their sites?
Sarah: No, we haven't had any issues. We're still relatively small, so it could happen, but it's challenging to block an extension. That said, we have been focusing more on how we can be supportive of brands in their resale strategy. We are in a time where people are increasingly aware that recommerce is here to stay, and brands know they need a strategy around it. We're now starting to have more direct relationships with them where we can ask questions like, "Do you have a resale site, and can we support that via the extension? Are you thinking about having a resale site? Can we provide you with insights?" There are a lot of things that we can help brands with, and our goal is to build a win-win relationship with all players in recommerce.
Jacob: You said recommerce is here to stay. Why is that?
Sarah: There are several factors that contribute to this. First, resale is now generally accepted. The stigma is largely gone due to increasing awareness of climate change, the need to reduce waste, and younger generations' desire for commerce to look different in the future. Buying secondhand also presents a lot of cost-saving opportunities. Inflation has become a driving factor in recent years, making it more appealing to buy resale. With younger generations, it's almost a point of pride to buy something secondhand. Second, companies like Poshmark, Thredup, The RealReal, and other online resale companies have made resale easily available online. Our goal at Beni is to bridge the gap between ecommerce and recommerce, so that buying secondhand becomes just as accessible as buying something new online.
Jacob: What led you to start Beni personally?
Sarah: I've always been passionate about sustainability and problem-solving. While working with startups at Rabobank early in my career, I always wanted to be on the other side of the table - where the entrepreneur sat - because I wanted to solve problems for customers. I was fascinated by the problem of waste and when I went to work at Imperfect Foods I saw first-hand the opportunity to make the more sustainable and circular option attractive, convenient, and affordable. I took that lens and went to business school, where I had conversations with people about the intention-action gap in resale, and this led me to start Beni.
Jacob: While having these conversations, were you intending to find something to work on or just having a general conversation?
Sarah: While I wasn’t intending to start a company, I was always looking for opportunities to develop solutions to the problem of waste. So when I started having a lot of conversations about the friction points in resale, I had to dig in. Specifically, I first developed the idea for Beni through an MBA case competition. After that, we built Beni step by step, always focused on the big question we needed to answer next. Instead of starting a business and then finding a problem to solve, we started with the problem.
Jacob: Could you describe the specific problem that you're solving?
Sarah: The problem we are solving is the intention-action gap. Research shows that a lot of shoppers have the intention to shop more sustainably and are open to buying secondhand, but they are not doing it. For many people, secondhand shopping “feels like a crapshoot,” as one user put it, because it takes too much time and energy to find what they are looking for. There are too many hurdles. Research shows that 80 to 90% of people are open to buying secondhand, but only about 50% actually do it. Our goal with the browser extension is to remove the hurdles when shopping secondhand. We are first focused on solving the search and discovery challenge - making it super easy to find and buy clothes secondhand. Going forward, our aim is to make buying resale as easy as buying new, so that it becomes a default option.
Jacob: During your journey creating the product behind the extension, what roadblocks did you run into and how did you overcome them?
Sarah: We knew that secondhand data was going to be messy, but it was messier than we thought. Being able to make it usable took a lot of infrastructure to ingest and normalize the feeds, and then use AI to provide alternatives because there is no SKU information (all thanks to our amazing engineers and my co-founder, Celine). We spent a lot of time last year on the core infrastructure and backend, which was not a blocker, but it took a lot of time. There are challenges with browser extensions as well, as they have lower adoption rates compared to an app, and there are high barriers related to data privacy. We are building our brand and user trust to ensure that they feel comfortable using our tool.
Jacob: Considering your target market, how large is the market and can you quantify it?
Sarah: According to thredUPs 2023 resale report, the global resale market is expected to be a $350 billion market in 2027, with the US market alone expected to be $70 billion by 2027. By 2027, resale is expected to grow nine times faster than the broader clothing retail sector. Moreover, 60% of the growth in the US is expected to come from new shoppers entering the market - a $20 billion value. Beni is focused on those new shoppers and creating an excellent experience to bring them into the market.
Jacob: What's your business model to monetize that?
Sarah: Our current business model is an affiliate model where we earn commission on purchases made through Beni. We have expertise in the affiliate space on our team, including our COO who comes from Honey, another successful browser extension.
Jacob: Tell me about your team, who is on it and why is each person on the team?
Sarah: We have a team of 11 full-time employees, including three contractors, with the majority being engineers. We also have one partnerships manager who manages our resale marketplace partners, and one product manager who manages the core product. Our leadership team is all-female, including myself as the CEO, my co-founder Celine as the CTO, our CMO Kate, and our COO Ryan. Our combination of experiences, including expertise in software engineering, environmental science, branding, and business, is one of the reasons why I'm excited about our team and the journey we're on with Beni.
Celine is an environmental science expert and software engineer who joined Beni early on. Her background in both areas makes her an asset to the team. Kate, our CMO, has experience building strong brands, having previously launched Bud Light Seltzer at ABN Bev. Ryan, our COO, brings expertise from Honey and has her own upcycled clothing line. Together, our team has a great combination of skills and knowledge that touch on all aspects of the product, business, environmental science, and fashion industries we operate in.
Jacob: What's been Beni's traction so far?
Sarah: We've raised a Pre-seed in October 2021 and a Seed last November, raising a total of $5 million. As mentioned, our focus has been on building our core tech and relationships with resale marketplaces. Last year, we started with just two resale marketplaces as partners and now we have about 40, so we grew a lot. We continue to build relationships with other marketplaces and receive a lot of inbound interest. From a user standpoint, we launched publicly last September and have been growing organically around 20% to 40% month over month, now at around 7,000 users. As we move forward, our focus is on growing our user base through our core product and core relationships.
Jacob: How have you grown the user base so far and how do you plan to grow it?
Sarah: Our growth so far has mainly been organic, and our strategy has been to position Beni as a unique tool that fills a whitespace in the conversation around resale. There is a lot of talk about fast fashion being bad, and how people should use secondhand to shop more sustainably. But Beni is the first tool that actually helps people shop secondhand. Our goal is for Beni to be part of every conversation happening around this topic. Another unique way we can grow is through cross-promotion with our partners. It's a win-win situation, the more people that download Beni, the more people we can bring to their site.
Moving forward, we plan to continue with our organic strategy while layering on some paid growth through various digital channels.
Jacob: Do your partnerships with retailers only involve the affiliate side, or does it extend beyond that?
Sarah: Our partnerships do not yet really involve the mainline site retailers. We’ve focused on partnering with third-party resellers like Poshmark, for example. Our partnership with them includes the affiliate commission aspect as well as access to their data feed. This access to data is crucial in allowing us to build our products.
Jacob: I wonder if there is a path to even partnering with the retailer themselves, not the reseller, in giving some kind of sustainability play. I'm sure most, if not all, the big ones have sustainability goals. Does this contribute to their sustainability goals and bring you more users without directly removing customers from their sites?
Sarah: I think it's a great point and one we’re thinking a lot about. We have started to work more closely with some brands and retailers. For example, we have a pilot program with Patagonia, where listings from their resale site, Worn Wear, are surfaced in Beni. We want to continue to work with other brands who have their own resale site so we can bring people to those brand-owned sites. The brand-owned resale market is new and developing and we are excited to help accelerate it. If resale is going to become the new norm, brands have to play a role in it.
Jacob: How do you quantify your impact on the climate?
Sarah: Currently, we leverage the fact that by buying something secondhand and keeping it in use, you are reducing the impact on the environment by keeping it out of the landfill, adding uses to the item, and eliminating the creation of a new item. To capture these nuances, we use LCA data from Green Story / thredUP to estimate the benefits of buying different garments secondhand in terms of carbon, water, and energy savings. We show our users the savings generated from a climate perspective when they make a secondhand purchase instead of buying new. It’s important to note that there are nuances to consider, such as whether it's a one-to-one displacement, if brands are reducing their net production, and whether the item ends up in the landfill even after one extra use. As we continue to grow, we want to be very thoughtful and nuanced about how we think of its impact because there's no silver bullet.
Jacob: Do you also consider the impact of shipping or do you assume it would be shipped anyway?
Sarah: The LCA model we use does incorporate transportation. I’ll note that this LCA is specifically for thredUP’s model, where they ship from warehouses, so it might be different for peer-to-peer models but it’s directionally accurate. Going forward, we're excited to also add to the body of data from an impact perspective. For example, we can help improve assumptions around the displacement rate. The question is: By buying this jacket secondhand, did you not purchase a new jacket? Because we're a browser extension, we could ask users’ permission to track all purchases, new and secondhand, over time to see what the displacement rate is. For example, let's say you made ten purchases in March, and 100% of them are new. In June, you made ten purchases, but 2% were still made secondhand. That would show that we're actually displacing new purchases and adopting more used items.
Jacob: Have you considered refurbishing high-emission products like leather to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills?
Sarah: As a software company, we haven't directly thought about refurbishing products. However, our goal is to accelerate the circular economy, which involves many layers, including resale, refurbishment, and recycling. Recently, I talked to someone from Hemster, which has an infrastructure for repairs and refurbishment. We are exploring ways to collaborate and give products new life. We need to make it accessible and convenient for people to choose the circular option instead of the linear one of buying fast fashion and throwing it in the trash. As we grow, we want to explore other opportunities beyond resale to contribute to the circular economy.
Jacob: What's one thing that your company does well?
Sarah: We have many strengths, but the one that stands out is our ability to understand our users and partners. We have unique insights into the needs and behaviors of our customers. From the beginning, our goal has been to help shoppers meet their needs in a more sustainable and affordable way. Additionally, we have built strong partnerships with resale marketplaces, which has allowed us to create the largest aggregated database of online resale. By understanding the challenges faced by our partners, we have been able to help them overcome those obstacles and build a strong position in the market. Overall, our ability to understand the needs of those we serve has been a key strength for our company.
Jacob: What's one thing that you've struggled with?
Sarah: In general, we struggle with moving fast with intention. Our model, both as a VC-backed business and from an impact perspective, requires scale. We want to encourage millions of people to buy one more thing secondhand, rather than 100 people buying everything secondhand. We're constantly trying to move fast, but at the same time, we want to ensure that Beni makes resale a more beautiful and awesome experience. We need to put a lot of intention behind the product. Also, as we continue to grow, we’ve found that paid marketing attribution is challenging for our product because we don't own where you download or where you make your purchase. Connecting all the dots to understand who we are acquiring and who is using our product has been difficult, and it's something that I never expected.
Jacob: What's one piece of advice you have for other entrepreneurs?
Sarah: My main advice for entrepreneurs is to take every piece of advice with a grain of salt. It's important to recognize patterns in advice and trust your gut. When I started building Beni, I would get conflicting advice from different people, and it made me realize that I needed to ask multiple trusted sources and weigh the feedback. It's important to get advice, but it's also important to have the internal ability to say, "This advice doesn't sit well with me, and it's not what I've heard elsewhere." So, my main piece of advice is to seek advice, but ultimately, trust your own judgment.
Jacob: What's the most persistent issue you've faced since starting Beni?
Sarah: Driving behavior change is hard; getting people to purchase secondhand who do not currently do so is hard. If our goal is to make resale as easy as buying new, there are a lot of friction points to solve for. We solved the first challenge: Helping users find the right item to buy. But there's always another challenge when seeking parity between ecommerce and recommerce - like not being able to return resale items, uncertainty about sizing, or concerns about authenticity. It's like peeling back an onion to find the next hurdle that’s blocking someone from buying secondhand.
Jacob: What is your overall goal for the company?
Sarah: Our highest-order purpose is to transform the norms of consumption. First and foremost, we aim to make resale the new norm. We want millions of people to buy at least one secondhand item that they wouldn't have otherwise bought. We often think about a study conducted by Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey several years ago, which estimated that in order for the fashion industry to stay in line with a 1.5-degree target, one in five garments would need to be traded through circular business models by 2031. This is significantly more than current levels, but it's still only one in five, and our goal is to make a significant impact towards achieving this now.
Jacob: What is the current level?
Sarah: It's hard to estimate, but I would say that the current level of the resale market is around 5% of the clothing retail market. So it's definitely not where we want it to be, but it's also not unattainable. And I think that when you encourage people to buy at least one item secondhand out of every five purchases, it can make a huge impact. Our goal is really about progress over perfection and making it so that buying new is not the default option. We want to ensure that there's easy access to both options.
Jacob: Compared to a lot of the other goals needed to reach net zero as a society, just quadrupling something like the resale market from 5% to 20% doesn't seem so daunting.
Sarah: It's pretty attainable. Of course, we'd love to aim higher than that. But I think understanding what drives behavior change is difficult. Changing behaviors is hard. But when you consider the alternative of having to live in a bunker and not enjoy anything, shifting how we procure clothing seems like a small change. There is still a lot of beauty in the world, and we want to preserve that beauty while reducing the negative impacts of our consumption.
Jacob: What's the best way for people to connect with you?
Sarah: The best way to connect with Beni is through joinbeni.com or on Instagram at join_beni. As for me, you can find me on LinkedIn under Sarah Pinner.
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