The Ultimate Revive-al: Allison Lee with Jenny Fielding
Allison Lee, founder and CEO of Revive, chats with Jenny Fielding, GP of Everywhere Ventures on episode 112: The Ultimate Revive-al.
In episode 112 of Venture Everywhere, Jenny Fielding, General Partner at Everywhere Ventures, talks with Allison Lee, co-founder and CEO of Revive, a turnkey virtual tailoring solution that helps fashion brands reduce returns and dead stock by refurbishing and reselling garments. Allison shares how a pandemic-forced pivot exposed a damages problem every brand was quietly absorbing but no one was solving. She discusses how Revive challenges the industry consensus that damaged inventory is a write-off, instead unifying item-level inspection, refurbishment, and resale into one system that recovers value brands didn’t know they had.
In this episode, you will hear:
Replacing SKU-level inventory systems with item-level inspection and decisioning.
Bridging the gap between brand needs and 3PL capabilities.
Refurbishment as a higher-recovery alternative to donation and liquidation.
Live commerce as the resale channel for Gen Z shoppers.
Human-in-the-loop operations where AI augments rather than replaces physical inspection.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:04 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We’re a global community of founders and operators who’ve come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:32 Jenny: Welcome, everyone, to Venture Everywhere. Today, we have a very special guest, Allison Lee, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Revive, a turnkey virtual tailoring solution that helps fashion brands reduce returns and dead stock by analyzing and refurbishing garments for resale.
00:00:49 Jenny: I love this company, not only because I’ve known Allison for a long time and a huge fan, but I love the sustainability angle here. And that’s the thing that grabbed me, always, with all the iterations of Revive. Welcome, Allison, to the pod.
00:01:03 Allison: Thanks so much, Jenny. I’m so excited to share more. I feel like our business model has certainly evolved in over seven years that you and I have known each other.
00:01:13 Jenny: We’ve known each other for a while.
00:01:14 Allison: Yeah, and talked about how we can really bring value to the brand. I feel like sustainability and this feel-good side of like, “Oh, how do I rescue items from prematurely ending up in a landfill?” But I think the other side of that is how do I maximize the actual financial value of these goods?
00:01:32 Allison: Yeah. It’s been a really fun journey as we went from a tailoring company to a refurbishing company and now it’s a resale company. So definitely have expanded quite a bit.
00:01:43 Jenny: I love it. I’d love to talk about the beginning and the inspiration for the original company. But, aside from mission, where did you get this idea that this was going to be the future seven, eight years ago?
00:01:56 Allison: Long, long time ago, it was actually called Hemster. It was not even called Revive. When we first started Hemster, the mission was simpler. It was more for the brick and mortar stores to really capture the right sales happening in the fitting rooms.
00:02:11 Allison: So we’re really focusing on the fitting room experience of like, you’re trying on that item, but you can only pick between small and medium. And you’re like, “Still doesn’t fit me.” What do you do? So we just wanted to really provide tools to these store associates and managers that can maximize sales and minimize returns.
00:02:28 Allison: Our first go to market strategy was like, how do I work with the malls back then? Westfield, San Francisco is RIP now, but that was actually like our first place that we launched and got in touch with 30 brands right away. We signed the deals with Westfield, G.G.P., Simon, Macerich.
00:02:46 Allison: We were able to work with a lot of stores right away and that’s how we built our relationship with the brands as like an outsider. Once that happened, we’re like, “Amazing. Let’s raise our seed.” In 2019, moved to New York from SF and we’re growing our footprint quite rapidly. And then, pandemic happened in 2020 and all the malls, stores closed down literally overnight.
00:03:11 Allison: What had really helped was we had a really close relationship with these brands so we were able to deploy e-comm and sort of repair portal for their consumers to try on. In that process, we actually noticed that the warehouse managers were using our repair portal way more than the consumers.
00:03:29 Allison: And that’s how we organically figured out that there was this damages problem that every brand was dealing with. And that’s how we pivoted into more of the Revive.
00:03:38 Allison: Yeah. It was very consumer-driven and very user-driven journey, but in that process, you observe how they actually use your product. And you’re like, “Oh, there’s a whole new use case that I didn’t even think about.” And you sort of like follow what you see.
00:03:53 Jenny: I love that. I remember when we first met, I am an unusual sized person because I’m 5’10. I have no hips and clothing online does not fit me. I’m like one of those weird people that always struggled with it. So I like the mission.
00:04:05 Jenny: But I remember even in those early days, you always had a bigger idea and mission. It’s one of the things I really admire about you, Allison, wherever you are today, you’re always thinking about the next thing.
00:04:17 Jenny: Even though it was a pivot, maybe something you hadn’t anticipated, I do remember in the early days, you kind of architecting where this could go beyond the consumer measuring and whatnot. Talk a little bit about the transition and, obviously, you kind of went from consumer to more B2B and what that was like.
00:04:36 Allison: I feel like with the consumer, it’s a very interesting challenge because like you’re relying on the brands to market it. And like we still believe that that’s a new consumer movement. I think Gen Z’s are craving even more personalization.
00:04:48 Allison: Also, how does like this D2C brands compete with dupe brands and like Shein’s and Temu’s now? You have to really think about what’s the elevated experience I’m giving to my own consumers to protect my most valuable assets. So that angle of, “Hey, let’s make sure we’re maximizing the sales within your season.”
00:05:07 Allison: Once you kind of see a lot of product market fit around that, then you think about what’s the other application of your current product that you have already built. A lot of the volume actually comes from the B2B-owned inventory so we really want to think about getting into that. We just didn’t really didn’t know what the angle was until we saw them using our portal in a very specific way.
00:05:29 Allison: I do believe that having the right P.O.V. or hypotheses of wanting to expand and wanting to like go into different application of the software that you have built already. But I don’t think we would have figured out this damages thing is the right angle unless we’re watching the users really closely.
00:05:48 Allison: But we think about Hemster and like now we call this Atelier to make it more elevated. If Atelier is really good at maximizing in-season sales, then brands still have to think about like, “Well, there are still things that didn’t sell during in-season that I’m dealing with.” Those are two big buckets of items of damages or excess inventory.
00:06:10 Allison: Excess inventory is perfectly good quality, but it’s like the final extra large that no one wanted or the color people didn’t want. Then we thought how do I also help brands for those two additional buckets sales.
00:06:23 Allison: The Revive came to life because the damages, we should refurbish it and restock it so you can sell even more in the full season price situation. But also on the liquidation side, that’s where our resale on the live streaming and live commerce is really growing quickly. It’s like the same idea of wanting to help brands, but we’re expanding into different product lines.
00:06:46 Jenny: Super interesting. So now you’re a supply chain company. Can you talk about the supply chain gap that Revive is solving that many brands underestimate? They don’t necessarily come to you day one like they have this pain point and then they’re like, “Oh, shoot. Allison, I need help.”
00:07:02 Allison: When you think about what’s the brand’s current blocker, I think it’s tech and logistics. Both of those two things come together. So if you’re thinking about how the brands are set up, their system doesn’t think about item at an item level. They think like, “Oh, there’s a SKU and quantity.”
00:07:20 Allison: So they know that I have 2000 of this SKU. But when you’re dealing with returns and damages and things that didn’t sell, you actually need to go layer deeper and think like, yes, there’s 2000 items that got damaged out, but you don’t understand why individually were the problems.
00:07:41 Allison: So there is this huge tech and system gap that brands are feeling today. A lot of the brands, because they outsource their logistics already, it’s so hard for them to like train a third party logistics person to really care about the ROI and inventory value for you.
00:08:00 Allison: So they’re like, “Ah, it’s a very binary instructions that I have to give them.” It’s like either the 3PLs will handle everything and charge every single item $20. So like service them or they don’t do anything.
00:08:14 Allison: So you’re sort of like, “Yeah, but only some items are worth it for me like to incur this additional $20 fee.” So how would a 3PL think about it in the same lens that brands are? So I think that’s the gap that we’re closing.
00:08:28 Allison: It’s like, first of all, let me build you a system that actually looks at every single item and make this idea of like, is this item worth it or not? Because even if it’s the same SKU, you’re like, “This one just has a minor stain.” That’s a different story than like, this thing has blood on it. Like, you should really not try to fix this. And that decision point right now is impossible to make. That’s the proprietary system that we built first.
00:08:55 Allison: And then, we also come with physical humans and warehouses who are trained to use our system to actually follow the SOP that we give them. Because that’s the other side that I have seen from SaaS companies. Like, sure, you can plug in the data and give recommendations.
00:09:12 Allison: But I find that when you’re dealing with physical goods clients, they need physical help more than data help. So they’re like, “Can you just do it also? If you’re going to recommend it, can you do it, too?” So we have really built both of those things together to go to market.
00:09:29 Jenny: And once you develop that trust, there’s a lot you can do for these customers.
00:09:33 Allison: For sure. And that’s how we win over their resale business on the liquidation side of like, showing them that, “Look, we are really good at making decisions to understand which specific items you should restock versus not.”
00:09:47 Allison: Then the natural next conversation is they’re like, “So what should I do with all the non-restocked items? Do you have a solution for us?” Initially, we started to sell on static third-party platforms like eBay, Poshmark Bestie or Depop, ThredUp, where you’re posting the prices.
00:10:05 Allison: We were watching the Gen Z and resale trend and we have observed this emerging platform coming up. That’s this live commerce on like the Whatnot, eBay Live, TikTok Live, Instagram Live, all these live selling environment is actually a lot more coherent to how Gen Zs grew up.
00:10:25 Allison: Because if you’re thinking about how they’re interacting with their content and their entertainment, the static e-commerce listings feel really boring to those Gen Zers. You actually need to hook them and get them interacting with the brands in a more interesting way.
00:10:39 Allison: And I think those are that Whatnot platform where you’re watching the host, you’re looking at the specific item and this feels like it’s a game and you’re interacting like through this like bidding exercise. We have seen that environment grow 20X.
00:10:55 Allison: The year over year growth was insane. So now we’re tripling down to like think about how do I get brands to participate in this new shopper behavior that without us as an infrastructure, it’s literally impossible for a brand to do so.
00:11:12 Jenny: Taking a step back, can you tell us what typically happens to these garments today? Holistically, what did you notice was happening to the garments and why is that system so broken?
00:11:23 Allison: We sort of talked about items to sell. That’s great. But there’s this bunch of things that just don’t sell and don’t get restocked. There’s two major buckets of why that’s happening.
00:11:33 Allison: One is that quality is bad because there was stain, there was deodorant things. You need to do something to fix this. That’s very different from like the true quality is fine, but people didn’t want it, which is the excess inventory.
00:11:46 Allison: Usually, we have seen brands engage in three different ways. Brands who don’t have their shit together treat the damages and excess inventory as same. And they’re like, “Oh, it doesn’t even matter if it’s a problem with the quality or problem with the consumer signal. I’m just going to like recycle the whole thing or donate the whole thing or try to sell it into like offshore liquidator.”
00:12:09 Allison: So like, you’re taking on all the losses because you’ve already paid for the manufacturing and shipping. But you’re sort of saying, “Ah, it’s fine. I’m just going to take the loss and move it out all at the same time.”
00:12:21 Allison: Some more sophisticated brands are like, “Wait a second. These are two different consumer signals. If the quality is fine, I can still sell it.” Then they will try to find liquidators or jobbers or that’s how the items end up in sample sale. It’s still 80 to 90 percent off.
00:12:38 Jenny: That’s how we get the sample sale. That’s fascinating. I always wondered about that.
00:12:42 Allison: You’re like, “How does this work? Or like how the units end up in TJ Maxx,” is because they’re building out their own bulk buyers. They’re also taking loss when this happens. They’re like, “Yep, I’m not even going to recover my COGS on this.” But it’s still better than getting even less recovery on this offshore liquidators. So they’re like a domestic liquidator/the sample sale situation going on.
00:13:04 Allison: However, if it’s second quality damages, you can’t even sell it to domestic liquidators because they won’t take anything that’s not a sellable quality from day one. So that’s where this damages actually end up in this like donation or recycle bucket or just straight up destruction for some of these brands. And they are not expected to recover any value on those.
00:13:28 Allison: But it’s ironic because the best sizes and SKUs are actually in the damages and not even in the liquidation. We’re like, “Oh, you should actually fix it and then you can restock it and sell yourself or we can sell it for you on these different resale channels.” That’s how we’re entering the market on the damages side because it has the least expected recovery, but the most consumer signals on that specific type of inventory.
00:13:55 Jenny: Fascinating. Well, now I have to ask what type of damages are most commonly recoverable?
00:14:01 Allison: It’s wild because I think brands enter into this like, “Unless it’s perfect, it’s damages.” Things that are totally fixable end up in this damage bin. It could be like really wrinkled. It could be like dog hairs on the sweater. It could be deodorant stains.
00:14:20 Allison: 95% of those units actually become sellable quality by the time we’re done with them. And then we work with the brands to say like, “Hey, out of this 95%, which of the units do you actually want to restock versus not?” And then we’ll work through the ROI exercise with them.
00:14:36 Allison: But a lot of the damages are actually not that damaged because it’s not like someone really owned it and wore it. It’s not really second life. It’s really just second quality from the brand’s perspective. We find these guys to be very, very minimally damaged. It’s just that there’s not a way to really handle the damages at a volume today.
00:15:00 Jenny: So interesting. Can we get a little peek behind the scenes of how you integrate into the brand’s existing returns or warehouse operations or whatever it is? How do you make that seamless and simple for your customers?
00:15:14 Allison: We have found that this really depends on like the brand’s supply chain set up today. For example, we know that they eventually have to ship out all their damages out of either their stores or their e-comm. There are two ways for us to intercept that quickly.
00:15:29 Allison: We’re like, “What’s the point for your stores to ship their damages into your 3PL if nothing’s going to happen to them anyway and you’re just shipping them out somewhere else? Let us intercept all the store damages first.” That’s how we work with Michael Kors today. All of their stores before Revive used to ship their damages to their aggregated 3PL, but now it actually comes to one of our three hubs.
00:15:53 Allison: And then we’ll get like a bulk return shipment from their warehouses, too. We’re sort of like, “Just change the address on these shipping boxes. So instead of going into like your 3PL, it just comes to our 3PL now.” And that’s been the easiest way for us to like integrate into their supply chain because it doesn’t take that much of training or the actual data integration side.
00:16:16 Allison: We also have found that the less you ask the brands to do, faster the deal will go so we have really tried to make it as turnkey as possible. Now we’re like, “Just physically route the units to us and we will literally look at every single item for you.”
00:16:32 Jenny: Interesting. Now that you’re deep in supply chain, can you talk about some of the unique challenges or even opportunities that you see in the industry? We’ve seen supply chain be unsexy and then sexy and then unsexy. So, with things around tariffs and moving goods, like, there’s some macro that you have to deal with as well. Talk about some of the challenges over the years and then what are the bright spots?
00:16:57 Allison: This unpredictability in the supply chain as whole has actually made more opportunities viable for like the newcomers or like the B2B vendors to come thrive. Especially because the brands that we’re dealing with, they’re typically very legacy brands so they’re very risk averse. The only time they will entertain a new solution is if it’s sink or swim moments. Recently, it has been sink or swim.
00:17:22 Allison: I don’t even know if my warehouses in Mexico is going to survive. So then they’re actually starting to like evaluate outside resources, which doesn’t happen very often. This is actually like a huge opportunity for like all the vendors to really go win their business, especially within this risk averse clientele.
00:17:42 Allison: The other thing, though, that we have noticed, I find that tech alone is not enough, especially when it comes to supply chain solutions. If you’re dealing with CPG apparel and for our cases, you have to be able to support their physical logistics too, which actually means then the tech product that you’re developing have to be not just AI.
00:18:07 Allison: It has to have human in the loop and you need to have this expected error rate baked into it. That’s a little bit different from like designing a true AI or like data solutions. That was my biggest learning process, just because my background is very much of like deep tech, data integration. And you’re like, “Cool.”
00:18:25 Allison: 99% of the data should be clean, but I have really found that that’s not necessarily the product journey when you’re dealing with the supply chain problem. We’re really excited about all the advancements that AI is making.
00:18:39 Allison: And then we’re just trying to figure out, like, what’s the right application and the expectation we should have with the AI tools. It can’t be 100%, I think. It has to be something that we augment to humans, but not replace the humans.
00:18:53 Jenny: I also think that that is potentially what makes Revive more defensible, is this human in the loop element. Can you unpack that a little bit more for everyone else listening, how that works with Revive?
00:19:07 Allison: We really think about the partnership between the product that we design with the users and operators. We’re actually using it to get the work done. We deploy our technology, but also our operational playbook to our 3PL partners.
00:19:24 Allison: What they are learning is like, “Oh, this is actually a new skill set.” They never had to think about item level inspection or services. So they’re sort of like, “How do I make sure humans can use the system that we have designed to efficiently process these units in a new way?”
00:19:42 Allison: We think about like, “Hmm, there are recommendations that we can give to the humans.” For example, when we scan in the item, the AI can think like, “Oh, in a similar SKUs like this, we have seen this type of damages. Is that right?”
00:19:57 Allison: We can like sure of the suggestions, but the actual confirmation and inspection needs to happen through humans. That’s where you have to design a system around operators and let them have the final say versus just pushing the decisions through like the AI LLM all the time.
00:20:17 Allison: That has been a very intricate balance that you’re playing between how fast can I make this item go versus what are still some steps humans have to take. And that’s like area that we thought about automation, too.
00:20:32 Allison: Of course, in the future, everyone’s like, “It would be so cool if the whole thing was automated,” but I’m actually not convinced that that would be faster than us using human in the loop. Because if you’re like, “Oh, can just do an image recognition, take a photo and like try to diagnose the images,” it’s actually not as accurate and takes a longer time.
00:20:55 Allison: So, for example, sweater comes in. You can take one photo outside, but you need to take one photo front, in the back, inside out. So, humans are already touching it to move around these items. So then might as well just get them to inspect too. It’s literally faster than image recognition. That’s where we’re accepting some portion of the tech and AI side, but not all of it.
00:21:20 Jenny: You’ve heard it here first, folks. Humans are not completely obsolete yet. Allison says the human race has a moment. I love it. People listen to this podcast. They love to hear the human element. You’re someone that works harder than anyone I know. You’re always on the road. You’re always pushing.
00:21:38 Jenny: Can you talk about some of the challenges that you’ve had along the way? You’ve had some pivots, you’ve been around for seven years. How do you get through those hard moments? What’s your support?
00:21:49 Allison: In the beginning, it was more so that I totally had the chip on my shoulder. I was usually the only woman in the room. Even when I was working at Silicon Valley before I started my own company, I remember I was usually the only person that looked like me in the room, trying to like fight for my strategy.
00:22:09 Allison: It felt like I couldn’t be another founder that gave up on her idea because people were sort of looking at me as like, “Oh, interesting. She raised $5 million doing tailoring.”
00:22:21 Allison: So I felt like it… it was like weird burden for me to like show people that like, “Hey, the supply chain could work. Even though human in the loop, it could work, it could get scalable.” So it was a little bit of proving to myself and to the industry that like, “This is a real business, you guys.”
00:22:38 Allison: Now it’s less of that. I think I’ve healed emotionally that I don’t need to prove myself so much. But I think now it’s more of like building the team and really having a strong team near you. It does add the new energy.
00:22:56 Allison: This human in the loop idea, it’s not just me. You know, it’s my VP of Product and Data. We really believe in this product strategy. And I think that’s what makes it really fun is to have people around you that have the same vision and courage to challenge what we’re hearing from the market and saying, “No, AI is not going to be end all, be all, and we’re going to create our own world here.” That’s been my new and healthier way of coping through the ups and downs.
00:23:24 Jenny: Looking ahead, what are some of the goals and aspirations that you have for the company? Tell us what we can look forward to with Revive and the future.
00:23:34 Allison: Liquidation, donation, recycling, these are not financially viable solutions for brands to really think about their asset that they have already invested to create. Our goal always has been like, “How do I set a new industry standard to really empower the brands to maximize their asset value and not having to live with like, fine, I’ll write it off and try to get 3% back?”
00:24:00 Allison: I think that’s not a good answer to these problems. The reason why we’re doing a lot of marketing and roadshow right now is really trying to educate the market that this new solution exists and we don’t have to be okay with the status quo anymore.
00:24:16 Allison: That’s our near-term and long-term goal is, how do I make sure we become the industry standard but also continue to build out our infrastructure so we can add even more value throughout the life cycle of a garment.
00:24:29 Jenny: What does success look like for you and for the company?
00:24:33 Allison: It’s a little bit of two parts. I mean, we think about it from the B2B side and D2C side. B2B side is like, if brands have anything unsellable, I want them to call me. If that behavior happens, I’ll sort of know that like we have become the gold standard of dealing with unsellable items.”
00:24:50 Allison: But on the D2C side, because now we’re trying to create this new category of how do you buy refurbished soft goods, right now, there’s not really a way. You have to either buy new or you have to buy thrifted. We’re actually giving the consumers the third category of like you can actually buy in-season items but refurbished at a discount.
00:25:11 Allison: If the consumers actually check if we have it before they go to other channels, I’ll also know that we are becoming the new industry standards for like new Gen Z shoppers to think about their shopping behavior in a different way. Our success is more in how are we impacting the industry behaviors and can we be like a market leader in that.
00:25:36 Jenny: What does success look like for you, Allison, who started this podcast talking about how you had a chip on the shoulder when you got started?
00:25:44 Allison: I feel that I’m already successful. I think maybe that’s what healed my chip on my shoulder is because before I was like, “Oh, yes. I need to like chase this thing. I need to raise more. I need to like build this team.”
00:25:57 Allison: Like, I think I didn’t think I was already there and that’s what drives you. And right now, I’m kind of like, “You know, I feel like we already have this really strong product market fit.” I want to go execute well, of course. But internally, I feel already successful. I’m like, “Oh, I just need to go do it now.” Maybe that’s my like coming around the corner moment.
00:26:22 Jenny: I love that answer. We are all very blessed and very successful and you certainly are. There’s obviously more great things to come, but I love that answer.
00:26:31 Jenny: All right. Well, we’re just at the end. We’re going to do what’s called the speed round. So these are just very quick one or two word answers and we’ll start. Is there a book you’re reading, podcast or some type of media that you’re enjoying right now?
00:26:43 Allison: I am pregnant, so I’m reading a lot of like baby books. The book that I have to read, it’s an exercise that I do with my partner. It’s How to Raise a Good Human. It’s helpful because it actually makes you think about your own relationship with your parents. So I’m like, “Okay. This is helpful for me,” but it’s not business related at all.
00:27:03 Jenny: Okay. First time we’ve gotten a baby book recommendation on the pod. I love it. If you could live anywhere in the world for just one year, where would it be?
00:27:11 Allison: Maybe Korea, just so I can be closer to my parents.
00:27:15 Jenny: Aw!
00:27:16 Allison: Yeah.
00:27:17 Jenny: Favorite productivity hack?
00:27:19 Allison: I start my day in New York time. It does really help to have that three hours in the morning. It’s probably my favorite thing where I’m like, “Turn off Slack. Turn off everything.” I just get so much done in the mornings.
00:27:32 Jenny: All right. Well, everyone, you can email her at 5 a.m. It’s fine. Where can listeners find you? What’s the best way to connect with Revive?
00:27:40 Allison: We are revamping our social media strategy, but LinkedIn is usually our favorite place.
00:27:46 Jenny: That’s great. Well, this was so fun. It’s always amazing to catch up with you, Allison. There’s never enough time. We’re thrilled for all of your success and everything that’s to come. We’ll miss you in New York, but also wishing you the best with your new addition. So congrats.
00:28:01 Allison: Thank you so much, Jenny. Let’s definitely catch up when I’m back in New York.
00:28:05 Jenny: For sure.
00:28:07 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today’s episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We’re a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We’re a community of 500 founders and operators, and we’ve invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
Read more from Allison Lee in Founders Everywhere.