Good morning! Ellevest exits its automated investing business, Mira Murati’s new startup is reportedly hitting a $9 billion valuation, and two Instacart alumni tackle liquidation inventory.
- Shopping for a deal. During her time as director of product management at Instacart, Camille van Horne mastered moving inventory from point A to point B. Last year, she and her Instacart engineering colleague Ashish Sinha left the grocery business to move product on a larger scale—around the world.
The duo are the cofounders of Highstock, a six-month-old platform that facilitates transactions between brands selling off excess inventory and discount buyers across the globe. The startup with a team of six has raised $5.5 million from lead investor Greylock and Instacart cofounder Max Mullen, Fortune is the first to report.
Rather than dilute brand value by flooding U.S.-based TJ Maxx or Ross locations with little control over how product is presented, brands can use Highstock to reach customers in new-to-them markets, including India, the Middle East, Canada, and Mexico. Highstock has started with the personal care category—the founders wanted to begin with a category that involved expiration dates, like their experience with food at Instacart—but plans to expand to others, including apparel.
Its platform operates as a kind of eBay for discount inventory. Buyers place bids for shipments of inventory, and brands can accept, reject, or counteroffer. Highstock isn't involved in setting the price, but the two parties use its software to pay and book shipments. Highstock's tech-driven approach offers a new level of transparency in a traditionally opaque industry dominated by brokers—one that Sinha understood early thanks to his family's manufacturing business in India. "You see thousands of brokers, and it's a very opaque process that you cannot trust," he says.
It's still a secretive sector—brands are reluctant to let it be known widely that they have excess inventory to sell, while buyers don't want their customers to know they're stocking inventory at a discount. But Highstock confirms that there are 50 brands currently using its platform, totaling $100 million of product. The typical transaction is $20,000. About 50% of its transactions are with buyers outside the U.S. who include Canada's Fragrance Depot and the U.K.'s allbeauty.com; skincare brand Goldfaden MD has sold product via Highstock. Thirty percent of brands using the platform have more than $50 million in annual revenue.
It's a complex business that is only becoming more so—with expected U.S. and retaliatory tariffs. "Any type of disruption to manufacturing or trade means that product will not be where it is supposed to be," van Horne says, "and that chaos is actually an area that Highstock can perform in because we have the agility and ability to move product in opportunistic fashions to good buyers."
Van Horne, the company's CEO, sees Highstock as a way to help brands retain brand value and reach new customers; to help retailers access new inventory; and to reduce waste. Customers might notice its impact the next time they snag a deal.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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