AptDeco shifted from individual sellers to power sellers, which now account for 35% of business. Around 2018, data showed 15 brands drove most sales, prompting direct partnerships with 30+ retailers like West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Article. These brands now sell new furniture through AptDeco's resale platform, handling returns and distribution.
Chapters
Sometimes marketplaces, you know, especially in consumer, you know, tend to start to kind of professionalize, you know, one or kind of both sides. And so, you know, like on the supply side, is that something you've seen maybe with like, you know, just more kind of consumers kind of moving into power sellers or resellers maybe? Yes, absolutely.
So now we close to 35% of our business actually is on the power seller side, which are retail brands. These are furniture brands that we are now powering resale on their behalf. So, and that started off actually by us looking at our data. So when probably 2018, 2019 timeframe, we saw really strong growth and, you know, we were just thinking about, well, marketplaces are expensive. You gotta acquire a buyer and a seller to make a transaction. And, you know, without endless amount of money, like, what are the other levers that we can take advantage of? And so we looked at our data and we saw around 60-70% of our sales actually come from like 15 or so brands, furniture brands. And so that was a big aha moment. We're like, well, we, we saw that they sell faster, they sell for a lower discount rate. And this is such that they have a— they're much more valuable. Like people love them and, you know, you can actually earn more. And so, so for us, there was a big question on like, well, how do we find every person who owns like a West Elm or delivered on even IKEA, like IKEA or, you know, Crate and Barrel or CB2. And, and, you know, we realized that's of course a tall order to try to figure out who these people are who own these products. And so we had a hunch that we could maybe talk to these brands directly and convince them to work with us. And so that's what we did. We started knocking on doors, a lot of brands. And, you know, we signed up like now we work with over 30 brands and including like West Elm and Pottery Barn and Article and La-Z-Boy and Boo Concept and Caligaris. And so we power their resale. Some of them we are, you know, instead of going in the outlet store, you will find their products on AppDeko. Some of them were actually selling directly from their distribution centers. Some of them were handling their returns. So we've also evolved our business model because we've built a technology that actually now we can apply to different use cases as well. So it has evolved, but it's a power seller is the name of the game for sure.
