Entrepreneur UK's London 100: Fleek
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Industry: Fashion
Fleek is a rapidly growing London-based startup that's built a first-of-its-kind platform to improve how the vintage fashion industry operates.
Its online marketplace connects secondhand clothing wholesalers with those that sell it at retail, recently announcing it had raised $20.4m to continue expanding its platform.
The company's founders, Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal have a truly international view of the vintage fashion business and a clear vision for how they wanted to innovate in the sector.
The idea for the business, which launched in 2021, came during the Covid-19 pandemic when Arora, then living near Brick Lane, went into a vintage clothing store that was closing down.
The owner faced a number of challenges, among them supply problems. Arora learnt that sourcing was still an analogue process, with buyers still travelling around the world to find goods, rather than transacting online.
Fleek aims to bring both buyers and sellers online. Sellers tend to be large clothes sorting centres - about 70% of supply is from Pakistan, some 20% from India, and the rest from countries including Thailand and Dubai.
Fleek's platform enables these suppliers to sell vintage and second-hand clothes in bulk to retailers and resellers primarily in the US, UK, and continental Europe (with France and Germany being the biggest markets).
Sanket Ararwal says, "This is such an exciting time for Fleek. We want to bring on more buyers, bring on more sellers, and build technology to continue empowering these entrepreneurs on both sides of the marketplace."
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