Seel, Which Manages $6 Billion Of GMV Annually, Launches Resale

Seel, an AI-driven operations platform for commerce, today launched a new resale capability within its order center that allows shoppers to recover value from their gently used clothes when they’re no longer eligible for a return or refund from the retailer once that window has closed.

By making resale available in the same portal where shoppers already manage their orders, Seel is solving one of the last unsolved pain points in the post-purchase experience, giving both shoppers and merchants a better outcome when a return isn’t possible anymore. The company has built an agentic layer on top of commerce that has everything to do with post-purchase.

Seel has scaled 7x over the past 12 months, reaching a triple-digit revenue run rate and becoming profitable, said Zack Peng, CEO and cofounder, who noted that the company has raised $50 million from investors, including Afore Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others.

“The thesis is that brands and marketplaces spend $280 billion a year on moving trillions of dollars worth of products across the world, across support, resell, clients and marketing,” said Peng.

The announcement comes in the midst of a period of momentum for Seel, whose AI-powered features serve more than 50 million consumers across $6 billion of GMV annually, representing nearly a 10x year-over-year growth in volume, according to Peng. The company’s clients include Poshmark, TikTok Shop, and Debenhams in the U.K..

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Peng didn’t rule out an IPO in the future, saying, “I think that’s an exciting milestone for me as a founder,” he said. “I think less about the exit. It would be pretty damn cool.”

Secondhand shopping offers affordable prices to buyers, liquidity to sellers, and reduces waste for the environment. However, it represents less than 3% of U.S. e-commerce transactions because of the friction of creating listings across multiple platforms, monitoring prices and negotiating with buyers, said Peng.

The platform runs auctions, updates prices based on real time market data to find the market clearing price and messages potential buyers when allowed. It automates fulfillment, sending shipping labels and instructions to shoppers, who ship the items directly to the new buyers.

“Effectively, we take the product information and generate the listing,” said Peng. “Obviously, copying and pasting information from the brand’s web site doesn’t work really well. It doesn’t look authentic. People want to see what the product looks like now.”

“We take all of the information and generate a compelling listing and we list it across seven different marketplaces," he added. "That maximizes the exposure and also introduces the complexity of how we have to manage the inventory.”

“We handle that automatically as well," Peng said. “When an item sells on one platform, the AI agent removes the listing across all other platforms to avoid confusion,” he explained. “If you sell it through Ebay, there’s an order and you have to fulfill the order so you have to take the listing off of six marketplaces.”

Features such as instant refunds for eligible requests, automatic resale across marketplaces, and real-time shopping assistance on merchant storefronts help merchants deliver enjoyable new shopper experiences and services that aren’t possible without AI, Peng said.

“Resale is one of the few examples where AI is unlocking net new experiences, which are not about saving money,” Peng said. “Some consumers are frustrated because of customer service experiences like when I speak to a bot and it doesn’t understand what I want and regurgitates the same word. The other side of it is you can solve problems. A lot of brands used to offer two-day responses and that’s a really big problem if you’re trying to update your shipping address.”

“Consumers shouldn’t have to lose out just because a return window closes," said Peng. “Resale gives shoppers more flexibility and a simple way to recover value from items they no longer need. Resale also extends the post-purchase experience for merchants in a way that builds trust, reduces friction, and strengthens the overall customer relationship, creating value beyond the initial sale in a shopping environment increasingly driven by ecommerce.”

“It’s so easy to order something in the middle of the night from your bed and it’s on your doorstep the next morning,” said Anamitra Banerji, managing partner at Afore Capital, which has invested in Seel. "What’s interesting is if you ordered quite a bit and maybe you don’t need it all or it was the wrong size so you have to return it.

“On Amazon, that became very easy," Banerji said. "It used to be the lowest price, but now it’s not. Many merchants have forgotten everything that happens after the purchase. The goal is to make it really attractive for consumers to buy. An enormous amount of energy has gone into conversion. What happens after that is what sets your brand apart.”

Many of Seel’s customers are small retailers and brands such as Karen Millen, Roxy and Boohooman.com. Seel’s technology makes it easier for them to deliver net new experiences that would wouldn’t be possible without AI. “A lot of them can’t afford to do it, but even if they have all the money in the world it just would not be possible,” Peng said.

“The application of AI has happened primarily in software and coding,” said Banerji. “We’re seeing applications of AI in robotics and law. The big portion of GDP is tied to commerce where people buy and sell. Elements of AI are making inroads into commerce, but there’s no standout agentic commerce play offering an agentic platform of tools to merchants whose primary job is to generate sales. How they do that is an opportunity for Seel to become one of the biggest agentic commerce companies in the world.”