S4E8: Andy Ruben of Trove on empowering and rethinking sustainable consumption

Welcome to The Room Podcast. My name is Madison McIlwain and I'm a partner for seed stage investments at DefyVC.

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In today's episode of The Room Podcast, Claudia and I sit down with Andy Rubin, founder and CEO of Trove. Trove is an end-to-end technology and supply chain platform unlocking secondhand shopping for your favorite brands. We couldn't think of a better founder than Andy to create a product that solves sustainability needs for brands and consumers alike. Andy got a young start wheeling and dealing on the streets of his Ohio suburb and everything from lawn mowers to VCR installs. Although he claims going into business was a surprise to him, he has held a number of roles both as a consultant and on the senior leadership team at Walmart, including the title of Chief Sustainability Officer. Before founding Trove in 2012. Andy shares many milestones from Trove's early days, such as their first investor, product pivots, and key hires. Trove recently announced their Series D raise, which included investors such as Commerce Ventures, G2 Ventures Partners, and Prelude Ventures. With the resale and e-commerce space expected to hit $64 billion in annual sales by 2028, Andy and the Trove team are at the forefront of enabling top-tier brands like Patagonia, REI, and Lululemon to capture this rapidly growing market. In today's conversation, we explore insights and themes such as empowering sustainable consumption, the art of the reframe, and building a business in a supply-constrained market. Let's open the door.

Andy, thank you so much for coming on The Room today.

Thank you.

We'd love to start at the beginning. Before you founded Trove, you grew up in Ohio, Columbus, to be specific, the home of many large retailers, actually. What was the first business business that you tried to start? For me, I think it was a lemonade stand.

I quickly moved from— I realized how much money I could make mowing lawns and then realized I could make more money selling subscriptions and then getting other people to mow the lawn. And then at some point I realized the most money was fixing people's TVs and hooking up VCRs. Funny story, did not take as long as the money was earned. So I typically hook them up, unhook them up, rehook them up just so I could feel okay charging the parents of other people that I knew enough money.

After mowing lawns and hooking up household appliances, you then went on to Washington University in St. Louis studying structural engineering, where you also got your MBA. This then led to doing strategy consulting at Capgemini. What's a key lesson that you still carry with from your time as a consultant?

Probably the bigger one is I never planned on doing business. So I've always had the belief that you pick the next point, and by the time you get to the next point, new opportunities, new things around a corner that you couldn't have seen before you got there. I thought I would never go into business. My first job was actually with Procter Gamble, and I was one of many engineers, and I really fell— I fell in love with the people side of problem solving, and it took me away from engineering toward business, which led to consulting at Capgemini.

That's amazing. After consulting, you found yourself at Walmart, where you spent a total of 10 years holding multiple titles from Chief Sustainability Officer to VP of Global E-commerce Strategy. Tell us a little bit more about your initiatives at Walmart and your time there.

First off, for someone who never thought they would do business. It was the last place that I expected to be. My first job there was leading global strategy for the company. So of all the places that, that would be unexpected if you say you're never going to do business, the last one to end up in is running strategy for Walmart. And I loved it. It was an incredible place and platform. Walmart's involved in everything. One of my biggest takeaways from there is that a large company, you can continue to have new roles. So as I went from strategy where I was working on everything from getting into food at that point from discount stores, sustainability popped up and that was absolutely unexpected. Getting to start sustainability was just right place, right time. And it was something I thought was going to be the end of my career. In fact, I turned the role down several times and turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. Moved into private brands, which gave me operational experience. No idea what I was getting myself into and massive P&L, a lot of understanding of what a supply chain looks like and the operational elements of a business. And then e-commerce, fourth role, and again, completely different where now I'm at a company that wasn't the leader in the space, it was a challenger in the space. And so understanding how that would play out and the role that Walmart could play. Again, all four roles, fantastic, all unexpected.

I'm hearing a lot of twists and turns in your early career, uh, through mid-career before even starting Trove. And for our listeners who either maybe never saw themselves as founders or have thought through what they thought their life plan would be and then where it took them, I'm curious about the attitude adjustment you had to have along the way to say, actually, I'm okay doing something I never thought I would do. What was that process like for you personally?

When I started a company, I started with a co-founder. Adam Werbach. Had I not had a co-founder, I don't believe I would have had the courage to jump. So that was a big deal for me. The biggest change that happened for me in that was that I could no longer depend on the business card to get into conversations. So at Walmart, one of the things of many big companies is because you're at a big company, you can pick up the phone and call somebody. They may never take a second call, but they'll typically take a first call. And when you transition to a tiny company, in that case, a company of two, You— none of that comes for free. You have to earn every kind of— every door you have to get a foot in or kick open.

Everyone answers Walmart's call. Everyone wants to work with Walmart.

Like 'em or not, it's an interesting call. And everybody that I ever called at least took the call.

Before we jump into the TRO Founding Story, which I know comes out of your time at Walmart, I was curious about what it was like being Chief Sustainability Officer at Walmart, because I don't necessarily think of Walmart and chief sustainability going hand in hand.

It felt like riding a wave. The opportunity that company had, and I think a lot of what it took advantage of at the time was scale and the ability for that company to change things that I can walk through from going from sustainability to private brands. I can walk through any grocery store today and see no less than 100 things that are different today because of a role that I got to play in them. And so what big companies can do incredibly well is they can shift the current paradigm and have scale change. So as Walmart brought together 60,000 suppliers, I'll never forget one of the videos we showed was population growth. There were 60,000 people in the audience. If you've ever seen it, it's just population growth over time, over the last, I don't know, maybe 1,000 years. And you see the population growth in the very end of the video. In recent times with vaccines, with oil, those type of innovations, and there was a gasp right across 60,000 people in an arena. And when you look at the scale of that kind of change where you are opening so many people's eyes to things they haven't thought about, there's incredible change in that. And so established companies have an ability to do that in a way that I think startups have a very different change perspective in the world. Startups and where I am now get to reinvent the way things should look with nothing encumbered. There are no processes that you've got to deconstruct so you can build them back up. You just get to imagine the way the world should work, and it's different than now. And so it's such a different perspective, but that time as Chief Sustainability Officer was— I look back at some of my best moments in business. I loved it.

And that paradigm shift that you're talking about is something Trove is empowering large companies to do, giving them the tools and technology to be able to move these larger, more complex supply chains, as you're referring to. Walk our listeners through what those early insights were while you were still at Walmart that drove you to say, hey, I need to go build something that's helping to solve these problems in a different startup way.

The early ones were when I was doing strategy at Walmart. And you'd look at, you'd look at all the metrics in retail and brands right now, and it's all based on sales. And you'd look at them and you'd watch customers shop. You think about your own habits. And it just continually occurred to me that the value wasn't limited to just the price you'd buy it at. It was the value you got from what you just purchased. Yet the whole retail world today has grown up on comp sales, which is a measure of what are your sales today compared to the same period a year ago. It's growth of sale. One of the big challenges with any retailer and sustainability is a need to decouple economic growth with resource intensity. and that actually doesn't sound easy, it sounds a little bit nerdy— but to do that in a way that economic growth is what powers the capitalistic system. So to figure out a way that people can still get economic growth without the need to just produce more and to sell more items isn't just needed, it's actually a huge unlock for all of us to get value. So a really silly example, when I was doing private brands, I couldn't understand at some point how you just start to look at the velocity of something like mayonnaise, and it starts to occur to you that you're actually selling sandwiches, not jars of mayonnaise. Yet the whole world feels so accomplished that we talk about price per ounce. It should be price per sandwich. One of the first realizations I had was that using Waze when I was still at Walmart and thinking, we're looking at this thing all wrong. We're talking about miles per gallon of a hybrid. And then there is technology that will tell us the optimal time to leave so we don't sit in traffic. And it's just starting to reframe how we look at value creation. So, one of the things I— if you ever see the plastic cutlery, this is the grocery store problem with me now. If you see plastic cutlery with the handles cut out, the hollow handles was something I worked on. I think it's 11% less resin in every plastic fork, knife, and spoon, but then we sold twice as many. So, everyone is 11% less plastic or resin, but then you sell twice as many. And so, you think you're moving forward, but you're actually moving backward. And it became apparent to me that we're not going to solve the crisis by making all the items we produce less bad. There is no amount of math in the world that's going to get us there. We need different models and different ways of serving customer needs that don't just remove the plastic from a fork.

That's where Trove comes in. You are reimagining what commerce can look like for both brands and consumers. Can you orient our listeners around what Trove does?

Yes. The idea is basically asset utilization. It's to get more use out of the things we've already made. What we do today, that where the growth has been, is helping brands. Not every brand, some brands are going to be big losers here and some brands will be big winners. The brands that produce things, design items, products, give meaning to products. Those brands like Patagonia, where there's massive demand, whether someone's owned it, 2 people have owned it, 3 people have owned it, everybody wants it. And so to get more use out of those items, every time the third owner enjoys a Patagonia jacket, that's another jacket never made, never sourced, never extracted, never dyed, never sewn, never moved. So it's not a lesser supply chain, it's not a supply chain. And so the orientation when we started it was, at the moment, Airbnb is starting, Uber is starting, Lyft, and it was the whole concept, RelayRides before they were Turo. So it's the sharing economy. and it's the idea of why don't we get more use out of the things we've already made, whether it's lodging or transportation or stuff. And early on, we originally were called Yertle, and it was a peer-to-peer marketplace to get more use out of stuff. And then we realized that actually the way in was not peer-to-peer. It was going to be brands, that brands would be the winners here, and that would be the unlock.

I met Andy, for listeners, when it was still called Yertle, which was a very fun name to say, but I think Trove fits a little bit more.

Yep. Urinal did not work globally. And the worst conversations I would have would be at bars when people thought I looked— thought that I worked for Urinal. So it was a very unfortunate name in that way.

For those who've been through rebrands in their startups, they can resonate with this pain point. The idea of reframing what counts as consumption is something that's really powerful and a super interesting part of what has driven the success for Trove.

Things get reframed all the time. When they get reframed, we don't realize they were reframed. If I try to convince someone who just took an Uber that they were carpooling, they'd think I was nuts. If you imagine pulling out your phone and staying in someone else's room when you're in New York, that's weird. It's the smartest thing you can do because you don't have to get insurance for your car, which is wicked expensive. You don't have to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a parking spot. You show up, you're on your phone, you step out, you're there. So just these things get better, better, better. They hearken back to models that were before, but there's something about them that is improved and better where people don't even realize the paradigm that's been shifted. Those are where so much change happens. And that's the same— it's as we think about Trove today, when you can interact with a brand today, we think about buying from a Patagonia, an REI, a Lululemon. For the most part, what brands do is it's a one-way street of design, production, and distribution— stores, e-commerce, getting you the item. 10 years from now, the same way that every brand today competes to sell yoga pants, every brand will compete to buy them back. Because to get them back is going to maintain that customer relationship. Brands that are not able to do that will simply be less relevant brands. People won't sit around going, "Gosh, I envision 25 years from now, people will say, 'You worked on what? Wait, there was a time when people— What did you do with the Patagonia when you weren't wearing it?'" I'll say, "Oh, I left it in my closet." People will look at me and they'll be like, "To do what? Why?" We'll say, "Because I don't know, because that's just what we did. We bought a lot of stuff and we left it in our closet. Every few months, we just shove it off to Goodwill because we had nowhere else for it to go." I actually, without realizing that I was using Trove, used Trove recently on Lululemon.

My mom was visiting and she was like looking to buy some new workout clothes. And I think what was so interesting is that I feel it's a bit of a hard pill to swallow to buy workout clothes off of eBay where you've known that it's left Lululemon and it's been to someone else's home and maybe they didn't take care of the product and maybe it wasn't washed. But then seeing lightly used products that were at a discount off of the Lululemon website, that was such a different kind of mental flip. It was like buying a refurbed iPhone from AT&T. And I bought a jacket because it was cheaper. It was like a moment where I realized that is so much better than going to Facebook Marketplace or other resellers to buy the same product. So I just had a little bit of like a reframing aha moment right now, actually.

That's awesome. That's the model. When you buy refurb from Apple, it shows up in the Apple box. It's beautiful. They back it up for a year. When you buy a certified pre-owned Lexus, it's not like the dealer you buy it from at the Lexus lot doesn't give you the good donuts and coffee and forgets about how to sell a car, right? They're like, you're having the experience with the brand. And one of the interesting conversations, just what the role of brands is, in a more transactional or marketplace-driven world. And our belief at Trove is that the right brands are actually more relevant than ever because they give products meaning, they stand for things, they're culturally relevant, and they have a great deal of trust. When you can buy an item from Lululemon, you're buying it from Lululemon, and there's something about that experience. I am, I'm amazed that luxury players today are okay after being obsessive about their experiences to have the majority of their first-time customers for these high-end brands experience that brand for the first time on a third party that has no connection to the brand.

It's funny because I've spoken to a lot of brands who are so fixated on building the most beautiful website to sell D2C and have the most perfect end-to-end experience, have a physical storefront maybe. And there are so many ways in which they're hyperfocused on having an incredible experience, And yet a lot of their products are just totally not being sold through those channels, very much to your point. And as I think brands are becoming more and more focused on building long-term relationships with their customers, the products that were sold once should definitely go through the same funnel again in terms of the customer's experience.

Kellan just did the research, was it's 14% of apparel, footwear, and accessories in the US. So I think it's, if you're willing to accept spending 100% of your dollars on 86% of your market, I guess it's fine. But everybody else should really think about how much of your market is being transacted in the value of your products. That's the threat side. The opportunity side for really strong brands is e-commerce. When you delve into that space, you realize that that product gains experience and story and narrative, and the idea of threading that together for your customers and being able to bring an item back and stay connected to the brand Again, if you're not doing that, you're just paying too much to maintain LTV and loyalty. That's awesome. That Lululemon experience, that, that's it, right? That's it in a nutshell.

You mentioned early on that it was difficult to get on the phone with a lot of these brands without the big brand behind you. But obviously my experience at Lululemon is an indicator that you guys have ended up working with some pretty iconic brands. Today, Trove works with flagship retailers such as Patagonia, Lululemon, Levi's, and REI. Tell us a little bit about who was the first retailer to say yes to your product and what that first customer experience was like.

Gosh, I feel like every founder has their story of how they had to, like, wait outside someone's office, wait on the street for the right person to walk out. And I've got a dozen of them. At the beginning with anything new, you've got to convince people that this, that this is the right thing to do. And Patagonia was the first brand. They were very mission aligned. And I wonder if the individual remembers it the same way, but my memory was over over drinks at a bar where I just promised that I wouldn't mess this up and that we could be trusted to do the thing the brand wanted to do, but really had to trust in a partner that, that would uphold the standards of the brand. And for the first few years, our whole mantra inside was whenever there's a debate, you just take care of the brand. If you think there's an ounce of debate, do what's right for Patagonia, do what's right for Eileen Fisher, do what's right for REI. And in that way, as a B2B company, you don't get to mess up your first few B2B customers. Because you just never have, you never have your next B2B customer. So I think it's different in that way to D2C. There were all of those stories, right? There were the stories in a bar. There were stories of waiting outside on Broadway in New York City for the right executive to walk out so I could bug her for 5 minutes of her time. I actually got in a cab with somebody. I mean, just whatever it takes, because you've got a belief of the way something should be, and it's going to be this way. And either you're wrong about it, or you just have to share what you believe with a person who is going to want to do it. And then eventually a first few of those break through and you continue to build on them. Once the first one goes, the second one who can look at what the first one did is significantly easier.

We've heard that on this podcast. It's true of customers, and it's also true of funding typically. And I have to say, big congratulations on raising your Series D, which was recently announced, led by G2 Ventures. That is no small feat. But speaking of these first moments, could you share who was the first investor or person, if they're an individual, who said yes to investing in you and Trove?

I've never had that question. The first investor is myself, right? Like, we put our own money in. And I always think that sometimes founders or sometimes early people in startups neglect that they are the biggest investor. People who join that company, they are the biggest investors. But our first formal kind of investor was Andy Rappaport. As an angel. And Andy is a longtime partner, friend, mentor. Gosh, I think the world of him from August Capital. And he shared when he put in the first bit of money that things would be different once we took formalized money. And I shook my head and I said, oh yeah, of course, let's move on. And I look back and I'm like, my gosh, like everything else, he was so right. The first employee you hire, the first money you take, the first time I took money from Literally, my Uncle Rusty, it just lives with you. You're like, I can't screw up Uncle Rusty's money. I can't let down the first formal money. I can't let down someone who's now working for us with a family. And it's just every step, you're like, from my view, you're like wading into water. As long as you're still above the water, you look back and you're like, ah, now I'm like 100 feet from the shore. Now I can't see the shore anymore, but I'm still okay. But it's like every one of those steps, you're a little further from the shore.

That analogy definitely resonates with me as much earlier on in my journey. It seems every month there's something that is a little uncomfortable and taking me a little bit further out. And yet we're still okay. We're still here. So it's good to hear from someone who's done this a lot longer that, that things do continue to feel this way and yet continue to grow in exciting new ways. Speaking of growth, we've mentioned a few of your early customers, but there's also been a lot of products that have been sold with the help of Trove. In 2020, you have had over 1 million items sold through Trove's platform, which is pretty significant. How do you balance the growth of supply being items to sell with demand, customers finding retailers branded with the Trove capabilities?

This is one of those things that became apparent. So it's been a little over 5 years since we started with Patagonia. It's this, it is all supply constrained for the right brands. So if I can find 5 million more Patagonias right now in closets, and by the way, there are 50 million out there not being worn. If I can find 5 million, we'll get them back on the mountains, all of them in a matter of weeks. So for the right brands, it is all supply constrained. And that's one of the advantages that brands have is that for a supply-constrained world for brands, Lululemon launched in all stores in California and Texas. And what we immediately saw was when you can simply look in your closet and bring an item back to any Lululemon store in California, it doesn't take a lot of math and planning or anything else. Like you just, you bring it back and you walk it in, you hand it to someone, you get a gift card and you save money on the thing you're looking for now. And so it makes it so much easier to get these items out of closets and across the board, the challenge we have in this space, it's not that we have to make items last 5 times longer. It's that we have to make it so much easier to get items back out of closets. 80% of items are unused within 12 months of purchase. A large number of them have never been worn. We've got a model in the last 75 years of selling, and that's a very transactional model. We focus a lot on reducing the price of an item. And in the future, the brands that survive are going to be increasingly relationship-based. They're going to focus on finding customers and never losing them. And threading that relationship with items is one of the really important ways they will do that.

You've built this incredible infrastructure, but tell us about a time where things didn't really go as planned in the Trove journey.

Oh my gosh, there's so many. It's part of the job of any startup or kind of young growing company to survive for the breaks that happen your way. You survive the breaks that don't happen your way to be there when the breaks happen your way. Some of the ones that have not happened our way, As so we pivot the company from peer-to-peer. It's, I wouldn't wish a business pivot on anyone. 5 years ago, we get Patagonia and Eileen Fisher's, our first 2 customers, and we're going to launch within 4 weeks. And someone I'm still close to today, our head of engineering decides to leave 4 weeks to go to launch. And I'd already played the stick around, just get this thing launched with us. We stay in touch. We just had breakfast, but those are moments where you just, you look to people around you to just get some sign that you're going to be able to make it through. And One of the people in that case was— his name is Paul Straub. He was with Claremont Creek at the time. He now is the founder of Wireframe. And I remember one of the things Paul did is he was on our board and he didn't call up to say, how you doing? How's— he called up and said, I've got someone I want you to meet. Let's go to lunch tomorrow. And it was an incredible head of engineering. And we didn't end up working with the individual, but it was just like the support from board members or people around you who just say, go to lunch, meet this person. I remember thinking about whether that person was right or wrong. It just gave me the sense of there are other people out there. Like, this is going to be okay. We're going to, we're going to get through this. And we ended up hiring the head of engineering and CTO we have now who actually developed— she was instrumental in developing the technology for all the books in the US that move around from library to library. And when I told her that we had to move around all the Patagonia, she's, oh, that's cake. That's not hard. And I was like, oh no, it's really hard. And she's like, oh, come on. I've done all the books and all the libraries. And This will be fine. And thank goodness we met. Her name's Rebecca. Thank goodness I met her. You just have to get through those moments. And I think that really is about the culture and the people around you.

You mentioned people again, and that was one of the first things you said in one of our earlier questions. And I just love the consistent thread of how people earlier in your career were what brought you into business. And now it's people who keep helping keep Trove alive and growing and keeping you sane. Just wanted to call out that thread I'm seeing.

At this stage for us, most of my day, probably 40 hours of my week, it's just interviewing and it is all talent. And every time you find someone that often I don't usually share publicly, but some of the people that we recruit, I'm just, I can't actually believe they're coming to Trove. Like, I can't wait to learn from them and it's humbling. And then they do things that completely wow me, right? Where I just, that's, there's nothing more fun than that. And then you get to work with these people and they bring their background, their skillset, and they're just, they're badass. Like, that's everything. Oh my gosh, we got lucky.

It sounds like Rebecca was definitely one of those incredible people, which brings us to our next question, which is very much related to a lot of the algorithms that you guys have figured out, but it's really around complex operations. Oftentimes businesses with interesting marketplace dynamics have equally ops-heavy business work to do. What advice would you give a founder who's dealing with a heavily complicated ops business?

Other than don't do it, it's the obvious, right? So it's the harder the work, the better the competitive moat and the harder the work. So it, it's for, for us, the complicatedness is that every item that we take back compared to having in the modern retail world, you've got 100,000 items. They're all the same SKU. So they might be in 5 colors or 6 sizes, but they're all the same SKU. That's what the infrastructure around us is built for. Everything about the system is built for that. So then all of a sudden you take 100,000 items that come from closets and every one of them is different. One's got a thread pull on the left sleeve, one has a discoloration, one is perfectly the same as it was last time someone saw it. And the variability is so high in being able to figure out everything about that. And so what we've done, I don't know if it's advice for anyone else, is you just, you look at what can be, and then you just start eating the elephant. It's one chunk at a time. And the first step is, can you create a process that just manages to take back the first 100,000, 10,000 of these items? And the place we're getting to now this year, we— well, last year, a step forward was instead of someone typing in, hey, stain on the left elbow, you're just able to click left elbow stain. And then in the technology, you can start eliminating the variability because in the technology or whatever I want to say, like in the system, the machines can basically say, okay, so that's a good item, not excellent. That's condition A versus B. And that's going to be because of this brand and this category with a 2-meter, not a 3-millimeter hole. And where that hole is. And that is all feedback from algorithms. And so increasingly, as you get better, you start looking for ways to take away the variability to make a process more consistent and more doable at scale by abstracting more of that into technology. And that's just a journey, right? Every time you, like, chip a piece of that away, you wonder how you ever got by before that. And there's just so much opportunity ahead of us in that.

That leads us to our next question, because as you're talking, I basically just want to keep asking you all these questions around what do you need and can we find someone who helps build this for you? Because what I'm hearing you say is that's a technology that you built at Trove to help you better categorize and quantify the individual SKUs that you have coming in through all of your brands, which is a huge effort to build. You're having to solve all these different issues for your brands.

We continuously look at what we want to be famous for and what we have to do, and they're different. And it's a hard exercise because it always defaults to, we've got to be famous for everything. And that's just not true. The part that we've really got to be famous for, that is the place where, because we were able to build the technology for single SKU items and inventory and whatever that jacket was that came back to a Patagonia store in San Francisco, getting that jacket to the best place, it's going to create the most amount of value for Patagonia. That technology that is invested in across 20 brands will be better than any single brand will ever be able to build there. That's what we've got to be famous for. And we know that. And so that's the place that like everything needs to go there. And then for the time being, is it really important that we're able to build a website for a brand because they have no resources? Yes. And we can do that. And it's important. And if we didn't do that, we wouldn't be able to serve the brand partners because they can't do that right now. But it's not the thing that we're going to innovate and make the brand new website that operates totally different. We're going to build a website so that they can actually partake in this brand new economy and get benefit.

I love what you're calling out for founders who might be struggling to find that product market fit. They might find product market fit, but it doesn't necessarily get them to where they want to be in 5 years. But it's paving the way to be able to solve the macro problem that they see, which is so powerful.

There's this, the concept that is all these concepts are so overtold and spoken about because they tend to be true. The one that, the one about doing things that are non-scalable has always, it's like it always has made sense. And I feel like in our evolution, we're finally at the point that we are actually seeing things. We are finally doing less scalable things at the same time that we're doing some things a lot more scalable. And that's been a really fun transition. I would say it's only been happening in the last 6 to 9 months where it's almost hard to do them and you have to separate them. And they're really things where you just say, "Yeah, we're just going to spend $250,000 on that and we might throw it all away. But if it works, we'll go make it scalable. But we're not going to make it scalable now. We're just going to do it 3 times and see what happens. And we're going to get very exacting on what success looks like and go." And that's a real departure when you've been scraping by for 4 to 5 years and someone's really sweeping the floors. And of course there's no room to do that. But if there's any extra capacity to do that, you're going to do one more of the basics we're not getting to. And so I think oftentimes, for me at least, I hear these stories and know we should be thinking about these things. And I wait, like, I'm just like, why aren't we able to do those? Then the moment shows up and we're in that moment.

I have no doubt Trove is going to continue to disrupt the resale and circular economy ecosystem for brands and there's a lot of macro discussion happening right now about where this overall sector in kind of the broader slice of the retail pie is going. ThredUp is reporting that currently the market, which is valued at around $17 billion today, is gonna grow to $68 billion by 2028. So 7 years from now, it's gonna at a minimum triple. You're sitting right in the eye of the storm for that. If I'm an entrepreneur or an investor listening, what is Andy's expert opinion on what's next and happening in circularity?

That's a big question. When a new behavior, technology, cultural change, all these things are involved in resale, when those things take place, the first people to credentialize that space, the ThredUps, the RealReals, Tradesies, Poshmarks, Vestiaires, and now I'm like, oh, I'm leaving people out. I'm leaving a lot of people out. They're the first ones to start with that because they're identifying a new behavior and they're serving that new behavior. And then what happens alongside is that the brands that have everything to lose and everything to gain that have created this world around us and depend on these products— who BFF just said 20% of the value is in the first sale, 80% of it is after that. The brands now are going, wait, that's our 80%. Like, Arteryx has worked 10 years on this material technology that now they get 20% of that value and 80% goes to someone else? Nuts. So it's the moment we see right now is that it's the moment for brands to say, those are our customers. We're not going to— that's not a service. We don't want a service for our customers. We want to own our customers. That's not about the world's online thrift shop. That's about— so we're going to build this into the brand. We're going to keep our customers close. We're going to serve them in the way that they're shopping. We're getting the most use out of the items we've made. The next 4 to 5 years, we're going to be amazed as we see how many brands normalize the fact that when you buy an item from Arc'teryx, well, it's Arc'teryx, of course, if it doesn't work, you bring it back. If it's got a problem, you bring it back. And when you're just done wearing it, you bring it back. And the brands that do that well will establish that relationship and the other brands will wish they had. And then beyond there, I think the world we described where I think we're going to look back now and think, how could we have not have thought about what to do after we bought a premium item? What that will do to the landscape is I think the middle market is most at risk right now. Everyone thinks because of this shift that it's going to be fast fashion. I personally, as a father, I wish it was fast fashion that was at risk here, but I actually believe it's probably the middle of the market that this provides the most headwind to because the more I experience Tom Ford shirts, the more I just walk by a J.Crew or Banana Republic because I— turns out I love Tom Ford. As people experience what they can now access through different means, The middle of the market's got a lot of work to do here.

Trove is making everyone a luxury customer at scale, which we love that access point and ability to create a love of a brand for just any consumer, which really speaks to the ethos of The Room, which means opening the door to more access for all and along the way, creating a more sustainable ecosystem. Andy, you have ho— held a number of titles from AV guru in the Columbus area for any homes that needed a VHS hook up to—

And that offer stands. If anyone listening really needs help hooking up a VCR, just find me on Twitter and, and I'll be right there.

I'll let you know. We'll put that plug out as a part of this pod. From that to Chief Sustainability Officer to now Venture Scale CEO, you've no shortage of accomplishments under your belt and we're in awe. Tell us a little bit about how you balance this with your personal life, because I think that's something that a lot of our listeners are asking themselves as they embark on this career journey.

I don't know if I've ever shared this with this individual. When I was at Walmart and was thinking about leaving to start a company, someone connected me with Craig Donato, who then has been a number of times kind of CEO. And Craig took me to breakfast and he basically— first of all, he tried to convince me not to do it, which was very kind advice looking back. And then after that, I remember he gave me the advice, this thing is going to eat you because— not because it's— not because any— it's because it's an obsession. When you are And I feel like in the moments when things aren't going well, you're obsessed because things aren't going well. When things are going well, it's even worse because how can you not take advantage of this rare moment to take everything you can? So Craig's advice, which I've really looked back on so much, I should let him know, was carve out some space that is just going to be your space and you're going to have to reinvent it every few months. And the things that have really helped me along the way have been— there's a moment where I would just find Monday, Wednesdays to have lunch with my wife, Deborah. She would be doing something in the city. We'd be able to cross paths for 30 minutes and have lunch twice a week. That was magical. Right now, in the midst of crazy COVID, we somehow sneak away for 20 minutes of a coffee sitting in our backyard from 8:30 to 9:00 AM. Whatever they are, if you don't carve them out and you're not deliberate about them, they just get run over. And it's been, for me, it's really helped to just carve those out and just declare them. And I think there's some real beauty to a more intersected work and life, but I think that requires more on our parts to stay sane and keep more, keep you more whole by taking the time to exercise, spend time with people, kids.

We love that. And we talked a lot about what's next for Trove and how you've made it to where you are today. So one of our last questions is— we have two left— is what's next for Andy?

When I was doing sustainability at Walmart for 3 years, I couldn't believe I got to do what I got to do. Like every morning I would show up and be like, really? This is insane. This is— what could be better than this? I am back there right now. And if I— maybe our board won't listen. Like, I don't need to be paid for this. The thing that motivates me, the thing that I feel really fortunate is when things align that you get, you get the right moment in the world that's worked for. —where you're at the right moment for something that you believe in, that you believe should happen. You've got enough funding that you got a real shot at it. You've got most of the right team that you love showing up and just getting in there and working with. You've got the right competitors that are there every day poking you and you're poking them back. It's on. And that's happening now. The market is more competition. It's fragmenting. It's growing. It's just when those things align, you've got to take full advantage of it. And I wouldn't want to be anywhere but here. It's like when that's not happening, I'm not a I'm not a good surfer by any means, but it's like surfing. You will, when you catch a wave, it's unfortunate that you will now work tirelessly to get another wave because you know what it feels like. And I feel fortunate that I'm getting a second wave right now, which is great. I want to be right here.

We are so excited for what's to come for both yourself and Trove, and congratulations on the point that you guys are at. And we are confident that you guys are really innovating what the future of e-commerce and the future of consumption and sustainability and circularity look like. So we're almost at time. We have our last question. Who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

What an awesome question. Linda Dillman. Linda Dillman was the chief technology officer for Walmart globally, and I got to work with Linda. Linda passed away from COVID actually in the last year, and I got to work for Linda when I was doing sustainability. And Linda and I were different in almost every way. and she was originally a hairdresser who someone said, you should really think about business. And then she worked for Kevin Turner, who was the CTO, and then Linda was the CTO. And I learned so much from her. Our relationship was not— in fact, it was often not smooth because we were so different, but she, she believed in me, like, in ways that I could see looking back. But at the moment, like, we would debate things and— but it's like, she, she just bet on me in such a big way. And it's so like it— you appreciate these people more looking back because at the time, sometimes they're— it's not always smooth. And then you look back and you just, you think about them all the time in what you do now, and you realize you stand on their shoulders. And that was definitely— Linda Dillman was one of those people for me.

Thank you so much for sharing that story and how she has impacted your career. Andy, it's been such a pleasure. Madison McIlwain, I could keep asking you questions and chatting for hours, but we'd like to thank you Thank you so much for spending time and telling us a little bit more about your story and Trove on The Room today.

Oh my gosh, thank you all. And keep sending me feedback from Lululemon. That's awesome.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room podcast. If you're new here, please subscribe, follow, write us a review, or DM us on social. We'd love to say hi. We've had some pretty incredible guests over the past 3 seasons, so go check them out. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific. See you in the room.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

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