Beni Scours Internet for Best Price, Alternatives for Resale Shoppers

Ahead of Secondhand September, resale start-ups reveal new spend, trends, funding and tech.

Much is happening in the resale space ahead of Secondhand September.

On Aug. 31, woman-founded resale start-up Beni will formally enter the mix to make secondhand shopping searches easier — and it’s not another marketplace, although it partners with 18 of them.

The free Google Chrome extension lets shoppers see real-time marketplace listings — across websites like Vestiaire Collective, Rent the Runway, The RealReal, eBay, LuxAnthropy, Geartrade, Nearly Newlywed, Queenly, The Revente and more — for exact or visually similar secondhand items of whatever they’re considering purchasing. Using machine learning and visual image recognition, the service hopes to make circularity easier for consumers. While not every product will generate alternatives, the intention is to get people in the habit of shopping more sustainably by the ease of the scrollable pop-up that appears on the desktop during online window shopping.

“The acceleration of the circular economy will over time reduce the amount of new clothing that is made and help curb the take-make-waste linear model that has become the default,” Beni’s cofounder and chief executive officer Sarah Pinner said. She also underscored the cost-effectiveness of secondhand.

The company counts $1 million in pre-seed funding from XYZ Ventures and Chingona Ventures, and is just one start-up pulling new funding.

Originally published in Women's Wear Daily. Written by Kaley Roshitsh.

Published August 26, 2022.