Archive Raises $15 Million To Fuel Growth Of White Label Resale; Looks To Expand Into Europe

Archive, a tech company building the resale operating system for brands, has completed a $15 million Series A fundraise. The recent round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and several minority investors, and brings Archive’s total funding to over $24 million.

In addition to the fund raise, Alex Taussig, a partner at Lightspeed, has joined the company’s Board of Directors. This fresh installment of capital comes less than a year after Archive’s seed financing and less than two years since the company was launched.

The funding will immediately support hiring across engineering and brand success teams to help Archive continue to innovate and scale its technology and integrations. It will also enable Archive to meet increasing demand from brands to incorporate resale into their businesses, and accelerate upcoming launches across North America and Europe.

Co-founded by Emily Gittins and Ryan Rowe, Archive offers a complete operating system for brands to power their own resale experience in a resource and capital-light way. Through each customized resale marketplace, consumers can buy and sell secondhand items directly from their own e-commerce sites and alongside new inventory, reflecting the integrated shopping experience of the future.

“We’re expanding into Europe more seriously and wanting to build integrations and options for brands in European markets as well as go into different categories,” said Gittins, who is also CEO of Archive. “We have clients that offer apparel, that are going into home. About 30 brands have partnered with us at the moment and we’re seeing a huge amount of brands reaching out to figure out their resale strategy for 2023.

“Fundamentally, resale is a very new business model for brands,” said Gittens. “There’s a lot to learn and it’s hard to do it well. Brands generally don’t have the capabilities and internal resources to do it themselves.”

Part of the challenge is software development. Generally, brands don’t have a huge amount of resources to invest in software development, and even if they do, there’s a lot of core business objectives to focus on. “Being able to offer best in class software through Archive is really valuable to them, both in terms of what the user experience is like and how we make it easy for them to buy and sell,” Gittens said.

Other aspects of resale are different than new, including how you financially account for resale, how you manage the logistics, and how you think about marketing and communications with customers is also different.

“We’ve essentially stepped up all these things and have these support systems, so we can be a partner for brands and help them figure out a way to do [resale] that’s really going to get traction from customers at scale, but will require pretty limited resources from them,” Gittens said.

“Resale is a massive online category already and growing three times as fast as new apparel sales,” said Taussig, partner at Lightspeed and Archive board member. “Archive has become the standard of choice for well-known brands from Oscar de la Renta to The North Face, that want to embed resale into their supply chain. Emily, Ryan, and team have quickly built the best-in-class solution to integrate resale across all shopping channels and distribution operations. Lightspeed was fortunate to co-lead Archive’s Seed round earlier this year, and we’re delighted to deepen our partnership and lead the company’s Series A.”

Marigay McKee, co-founder and managing partner of Fernbrook Capital Management LLC, which has invested in Archive, said, “There’s a huge number of brands that are looking to put resale on their 2023 agenda. The aim is to give a best in class experience for the user and for the brand. One of the advantages of Archive is it’s simple to use. It sorts out the behind the scenes without the brands having to get too heavily into how to manage the logistics. Archive handles the logistics for them.

“Looking and dealing with vintage is very different than dealing with new,” McKee added. “It’s not just because of the obvious. It’s about the provenance, and it’s about the channel. It needs a very different skill set and a very different set of resources. For many brands, having someone that can do that for them and work alongside them as a partner is far better than in some cases having to invest in the software development. This is an area that’s on everybody’s agenda and on everybody’s list of priorities for 2023.”

The financial infusion will help Archive partner with brands of any size. Already, Archive is working with The North Face, a $4 billion company. Archive also offers bespoke solutions for designer brand Oscar de la Renta and Finnish design house Marimekko, among others.

“To have sustainability, transparency, authenticity and recommerce and to have a company that ticks all four boxes was very interesting to us,” said McKee. “To have the capability, the resources and the understanding, alongside the software development that Archive has, we really felt that they had the opportunity to be a best in class partner for the mass brands and the premium brands. So, we’re really looking at this not just in the mastige area, but the luxury arena and having a two-pinnacle approach to the brands that are signing up with Archive.”

“We really don’t see resale as a side business,” said Gittins. “We see it as a core part of the business, so integrating between marketing new and used products and, integrating the customer experience and the customer accounts is key. From a consumer perspective I’m shopping the brand, I’m not shopping new or used. How to set that up is so new for brands, I think they’re wrapping their heads around how to get started. That’s where we come in and share our experiences and best practices that we’ve seen in the last few years since we started.”