My team and I are trying to change the way retail works through our rental subscription e-commerce platform. Humanity cannot keep consuming STUFF at the rate we are going – the Earth just cannot sustain it.
Tell us about yourself?
We spent two years running Canada’s top clothing rental subscription, dresst. We used this rich insight to craft the ideal user experience, administrator experience, and business model. We found the platform we built originally for our own use had much broader applications beyond our one retail store – and beyond fashion into furniture, toys, sports equipment, medical equipment, electronics, and more.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Entrepreneurship is anything but linear, so managing the mental game during those swings is one of the hardest and most important things to figure out. Don’t catastrophize the bad bounces, and don’t bask in the glory of the wins for too long – just keep moving forward.
What problem does your business solve?
Consumers feel a tension between already having too much stuff and still wanting more for newness and variety. In toys, the average 10-year-old has 238 toys but plays with 12 of them on a regular basis. So parents clear out the toy chest, then their kids get bored, then they go buy more, and the pile-up begins again. In clothing, women only wear about 20% of what’s in their closet on a regular basis. We buy about 5 new items each month because we feel like we have ‘nothing to wear’, and then throw away 81lb of clothes each year. We are treating durable goods like they are disposable, and it’s a waste of both environmental and financial resources.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
loopt™ is an e-commerce platform that enables tier 1 retailers to enter the circular economy. The loopt™ platform takes into the unique considerations of the circular economy and automates them. We have created software that not only accounts for sending goods to consumers but one that accounts for the return, cleaning, restocking and re-commerce of those items as well.
How does this come to life? Imagine a toy box in the cloud, where you pay a subscription price for access to whatever toys you want, for as long as you want, and when you’re done you send them back to the next renter. Or a closet in the cloud to achieve the ideal, sustainable wardrobe. Or a rental subscription to your furniture for your dorm room, nursery, or rental apartment – instead of buying ‘disposable furniture’
What is your magic sauce?
The loopt™ platform takes into the unique considerations of the circular economy and automates them. We have created software that not only accounts for sending goods to consumers but one that accounts for the return, cleaning, restocking and re-commerce of those items as well.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our vision is to transform the way retail operates and the way people get their “stuff” – by making the most of what humanity has already produced through the sharing economy.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Making a big pivot from a DTC business into a B2B SaaS company was both scary and thrilling. We had good success with dresst, often having more demand than supply – so making the change felt like a huge risk. It was also exhilarating because we knew that we could make a much bigger impact as a technology platform working with the largest retailers in the world.
How can people get involved?
Reach out to Kelly directly at k.pigeon@looptplatform.com for partnership opportunities.