You know what it’s like… you’ve just bought the cutest little outfit for the tiniest person in your family, and they promptly go and grow out of it. If that sounds familiar, Runchkins might just be about to become your most favoritest startup.
Nothing says Christmas more than some delightful Bokeh. Aaaah. Bokeh.
The concept is simple: You buy clothes, your kid wears ’em, and once the little one has grown out of ’em, you can sell ’em back to the company in exchange for store credit. You don’t even have to buy your own clothes, either; the company just launched a gift section where you can request presents you want, or give boxes of perfectly matched outfits to your vertically challenged friends.
The service, launched in spring, aims at the newborn through six-years-old age range, and is currently only selling new clothes. The plan for the near future isn’t hard to guess, however: The company is planning to start selling lightly used clothes at cheaper prices as soon as it starts getting a meaningful flow of resaleable clothes back into its warehouses.
The business model is ingenious; it incentivizes repeat business and it helps parents re-use or recycle old clothes. Clothes sold back to the company but that aren’t good enough for resale will be donated to charity. The model makes particular sense in the age bracket, too: zero to six-year-olds grow like mushrooms after an autumn rainfall.
The business is growing quickly, too. Launched in private beta in 2015, the company launched to the public in March this year. In less than nine months the company is up to 4,000 users, and 70 percent of customers who’ve placed an order placed another within three months.