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Former Apple technologist Alex Ruber and former Twitter and Asana engineer Parth Chopra first meet on Y Combinator ’s beginner lucifer platform , then met in person at a parsimony store for shopping . They after run low on a thrift store shopping misstep where they talked about solving problems with encounter the correct merchandise in the online space .
Many consumers shin to find out the right item without spending hours on Instagram . To plow this , the duo is building the search engineEncore , which lets user searchfor secondhand token from different source . The startup is currently part of Y Combinator ’s first - ever fall batch .
“ The integral secondhand shopping market is really fragment . There are hundreds of resource out there , such as Depop , Mercari , ThredUp , eBay , Craigslist , and more . It ’s hard for consumer to sift through them all to try and get to the production you are looking for . So we want to remove that rubbing for substance abuser , ” Ruber say on a call with TechCrunch .
Both Ruber and Chopra are immigrants from Romania and India , he said , and they ’ve been used to spending time and money at parsimony storage .
But thrifting is n’t loose . When Ruber tried to find a specific jacket from a TV show ( Carmy ’s hodgepodge jacket from “ The Bear ” ) , he started think about build a production to help him with that . He also want to bet for a Centennial State - founder work in the circular economy space . He noted that Chopra was a swell match because he was into fashion and thrifting .
“ For me , there was also personal interestingness because my mom used to take me to flea markets every Sunday . I bought a fate of clobber from those places , include a piano , when I start to learn the instrumental role . The core idea behind both flea securities industry and Encore is about find a hide out muffin , ” the former Apple engineer noted .
Encore’s AI-powered search
On Encore , you could typecast your question and get matches from multiple resources , let in Poshmark , the RealReal , Grailed , Etsy , and eBay . Because Encore uses a large voice communication model technical school , you’re able to type a question like “ Show me a dress that Emily wore in ‘ Emily in Paris ’ time of year 3 Episode 4 . ”
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The search engine also shows fond prompts such as “ Outfit inspo for ” and “ Shop from the Show . ” When you tap on them , you could fill in the prompt through automobile - populated suggestions or your own words . Mainly this is to show user the dissimilar form of hunting term they can expend and avoid a vacuous pageboy when substance abuser do n’t yet empathize the search engine ’s capabilities .
Ruber noted that condemnation distance can vary , sometimes by a lot . Some the great unwashed just key in a simple sentence like “ Show me denim ” while others write a detailed description like “ I am a 6’2″ soul who skies and search for skier pant under $ 100 with no big logos on them . ”
The used retail market is on an up growth curve , with analysts projecting it to reach $ 73 billion in the U.S. and $ 350 billion globally by 2028 . Areport by on-line parsimony store ThredUpnotes that online secondhand resale would account for one-half of the secondhand market in 2025 .
Encore process over 50,000 search per month and is see 26 % month - on - month ontogeny for search and 15 % ontogeny in clicks .
The inauguration presently relies on affiliate shares for revenue multiplication . However , the troupe is also experiment with a $ 3 per calendar month subscription providing unlimited hunting with forward-looking models , finding token by uploading images , and offering livelihood via email and confab .
