Fleek doing things that don't scale

In the world of startups, there’s a well-known philosophy championed by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: “Do things that don’t scale.” This approach encourages founders to start with manual, often labor-intensive processes to validate their business model before building automated systems. Few companies embody this principle better than Fleek, a marketplace for wholesale second-hand fashion that began with its founders personally sourcing and selling vintage clothing bundles.

The Origins of Fleek

Fleek was founded in November 2021 by Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal, two entrepreneurs with complementary backgrounds. Arora brought an MBA from Cambridge and experience in building and scaling startups, while Agarwal contributed his software engineering expertise from his time at Google and various Silicon Valley startups.

The genesis of Fleek came from a surprisingly personal place. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arora was living on Brick Lane in London, an area known as the city’s vintage fashion hub. With lockdowns in effect and time on his hands, he began to form friendships with the local vintage clothing store owners and resellers in the neighborhood.

Through these conversations, Arora discovered a significant pain point in the industry: sourcing inventory for second-hand clothing businesses was extraordinarily time-consuming, inefficient, and often risky. The vintage and second-hand clothing supply chain was notoriously opaque, fragmented, and almost entirely offline. This lack of transparency and organization prevented both buyers and sellers from scaling their businesses effectively.

The Problem with Second-Hand Clothing Wholesale

To understand why Fleek’s approach was revolutionary, it’s important to grasp the state of the second-hand clothing wholesale market before their intervention.

The journey of second-hand clothing typically begins with donations that consumers make to charity shops, collection bins, or directly to textile recyclers. These items then find their way into warehouses of textile sorters, raghouses, and local market dealers across the world. These businesses sort the clothing donations by category and condition before reselling them, largely through brokers and intermediaries.

For vintage store owners and online resellers, finding quality wholesale second-hand clothing involved:

1. Physical travel: Store owners often had to travel internationally to visit warehouses and markets, spending days “heads down, bums up” (as Arora would later describe it) sifting through massive piles of clothing.
2. Relationship-based access: The industry was gatekept, with access to the best suppliers often dependent on personal connections and insider knowledge.
3. Significant upfront investment: Buyers had to purchase large quantities without guarantees of quality or suitability for their specific market.
4. Limited transparency: There was little visibility into pricing, quality, or availability across different suppliers.
5. High risk: Buyers often had to pay cash upfront with limited recourse if the goods weren’t as described.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, these challenges were exacerbated by travel restrictions. Suddenly, vintage store owners couldn’t physically visit their suppliers, creating an acute problem for the industry.

The First Signs of Digital Transformation

During his conversations with vintage store owners, Arora noticed something interesting: a handful of wholesalers had begun to adapt to the pandemic restrictions by showing their goods on Instagram and negotiating sales through video calls. This ad hoc digital transformation was a lightbulb moment for Arora and Agarwal.

They realized that the industry was ripe for disruption through a dedicated digital marketplace that could bring the fragmented, offline world of wholesale vintage clothing online. But before building a complex platform, they decided to start by doing things that wouldn’t scale—manually facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers.

Starting with Manual Reselling

In true “do things that don’t scale” fashion, Arora and Agarwal began by personally sourcing and selling vintage clothing bundles. In November 2021, they sold their very first bundle, marking the humble beginnings of what would eventually become a global marketplace.

Their manual approach involved several labor-intensive steps:

1. Building relationships with wholesalers: The founders personally visited warehouses and wholesale suppliers, particularly in countries like Pakistan and India, which are major hubs for the second-hand clothing trade. They leveraged their cultural backgrounds and language skills (both founders grew up in India) to connect with these wholesalers, many of whom had never considered selling online.
2. Documenting inventory: They photographed and cataloged clothing items, creating digital records of what was available. This often meant sorting through massive piles of clothing to identify pieces that would appeal to their target market.
3. Creating makeshift digital showcases: Using basic tools like Instagram and video calls, they created virtual showrooms for potential buyers to browse inventory without physical travel.
4. Facilitating transactions: They personally handled the negotiations, payments, and logistics between buyers and sellers, essentially serving as human intermediaries in what would later become an automated marketplace.
5. Gathering feedback: Throughout this process, they collected detailed feedback from both buyers and sellers about their pain points, preferences, and needs.

This hands-on approach allowed them to deeply understand the market dynamics from both sides of the transaction. They learned about the specific challenges faced by wholesalers in countries like Pakistan and India, as well as the needs of retailers in markets like the UK, Europe, and North America.

The Value of Cultural Understanding

One unexpected advantage that Arora and Agarwal discovered was their cultural background. As they began to research the wholesale suppliers, they found that the Indian subcontinent is one of the biggest exporters and importers of used clothes globally. Their ability to speak the language and understand the cultural context gave them a significant edge in building relationships with these wholesalers.

“It turned out that the sub-continent is one of the biggest exporters and importers of used clothes,” Arora later explained. “Sanket and I both grew up in India. We speak the language. That really helped us connect with these wholesalers.”

This cultural connection allowed them to gain trust in an industry that was traditionally closed to outsiders and resistant to technological change. By personally visiting warehouses, speaking the local language, and showing genuine interest in the wholesalers’ businesses, they were able to convince these traditional operators to try a new way of selling.

From Manual Process to Marketplace

As Arora and Agarwal continued their manual reselling efforts, they gathered invaluable insights that would inform the development of their platform. They learned about the specific categories and conditions that buyers were looking for, the pricing dynamics across different markets, and the logistical challenges of shipping second-hand clothing internationally.

With this knowledge in hand, they began to build the Fleek marketplace platform, designed to address the specific pain points they had identified through their manual operations. The platform would include:

1. Standardized categorization: Creating a consistent system for describing and categorizing second-hand clothing, making it easier for buyers to find what they needed.
2. Quality verification: Implementing processes to ensure that the clothing met certain standards before being listed on the platform.
3. Transparent pricing: Making pricing clear and consistent across different suppliers.
4. Secure payments: Building a payment system that protected both buyers and sellers.
5. Logistics support: Facilitating shipping and delivery to reduce the complexity for both parties.
6. Social features: Incorporating elements like video handpicks that allowed buyers to connect directly with suppliers on video calls and hand-select items based on their budget and style.

Even as they built the platform, they continued to personally engage with both buyers and sellers, ensuring that the technology they were developing truly addressed the needs of the market.

Joining Y Combinator

The founders’ hands-on approach and deep understanding of the market caught the attention of Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator known for backing companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit. Fleek was accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch, providing them with funding, mentorship, and connections to help scale their business.

The Y Combinator experience allowed them to refine their business model and prepare for growth while staying true to their mission of making the second-hand clothing supply chain more accessible and transparent.

Scaling Beyond Manual Operations

As Fleek began to gain traction, they gradually transitioned from manually facilitating transactions to operating a true marketplace platform. However, the insights gained from their early manual approach continued to inform their product development and business strategy.

By November 2024, just three years after selling their first bundle, Fleek had worked with some 10,000 resellers and retailers from 70 countries, moving 2.5 million items of second-hand clothes from 1,000 wholesale suppliers. The company had raised $20.4 million in funding from investors including HV Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator, as well as individual backers like Shopify president Harley Finkelstein and Depop’s ex-CEO Maria Raga.

The Impact of Starting Manual

Fleek’s decision to start with manual reselling rather than immediately building a sophisticated platform had several significant benefits:

1. Deep market understanding: By personally handling transactions, the founders gained insights that would have been impossible to obtain through market research alone.
2. Trust building: Their hands-on approach allowed them to build trust with traditional wholesalers who might have been skeptical of a purely digital platform.
3. Validation before investment: They were able to validate their business model with minimal investment, ensuring that they were solving a real problem before committing significant resources to platform development.
4. User-centered design: The platform they eventually built was directly informed by the needs and pain points they observed during their manual operations.
5. Cultural bridges: Their personal involvement helped bridge the gap between the traditional, offline world of wholesale second-hand clothing and the digital marketplace they were creating.

The Growing Impact of Fleek

The second-hand clothing market has experienced explosive growth in recent years. According to Ethical Consumer and The Co-operative Bank’s Ethical Markets report, second-hand clothing sales have soared by nearly 50% as consumers increasingly reject fast fashion in favor of more sustainable alternatives. Pre-loved purchases have climbed to £1.2 billion, with online marketplaces experiencing a surge in second-hand listings.

By creating a more efficient and transparent marketplace for wholesale second-hand clothing, Fleek has positioned itself at the intersection of several powerful trends: sustainability, circular economy, and digitalization of traditional industries.

“The global second-hand apparel market is on track to grow three times faster than the overall fashion market by 2028, reaching an estimated $350 billion,” Arora has noted. “This is great news for the planet, especially as fast fashion continues to take a heavy toll on the environment. We’re excited to be a part of the solution by making the second-hand buying and selling marketplace much more accessible.”

Lessons from Fleek’s Approach

Fleek’s journey offers several valuable lessons for entrepreneurs:

1. Start by doing things that don’t scale: By personally facilitating transactions, the founders gained insights that would have been impossible to obtain through market research alone.
2. Leverage personal connections and background: Arora and Agarwal’s Indian heritage gave them an advantage in connecting with wholesalers in the subcontinent, highlighting the value of cultural understanding in global businesses.
3. Solve real problems: The founders identified a genuine pain point in the industry—the inefficiency and opacity of wholesale second-hand clothing sourcing—and focused on addressing it directly.
4. Build trust before technology: In traditional industries, building relationships and trust may be more important initially than having sophisticated technology.
5. Learn from users directly: The hands-on approach allowed the founders to learn directly from their users, informing the development of their platform.

Conclusion: The Power of Starting Small

Fleek’s story exemplifies the power of starting with manual, non-scalable processes to validate a business model before building complex systems. By personally sourcing and selling vintage clothing bundles, Arora and Agarwal gained deep insights into the market, built trust with traditional wholesalers, and created a platform that truly addressed the needs of both buyers and sellers.

Their journey from manually selling their first bundle in November 2021 to creating a global marketplace with thousands of users demonstrates that sometimes, the best way to build a scalable business is to start by doing things that don’t scale. By getting their hands dirty in the very real, very physical world of second-hand clothing, they were able to create a digital solution that has transformed an industry and contributed to a more sustainable approach to fashion.

As the second-hand clothing market continues to grow, Fleek’s foundation in manual, hands-on understanding of the industry positions them well to lead the digital transformation of this traditionally offline sector, proving that sometimes the path to innovation begins with the simplest, most direct approach to solving a problem.