Inturn

Overview

Inturn is a SaaS marketplace platform for brands to sell their excess inventory to retailers.  For sellers, it allows brands to organize, price, and sell excess inventory quickly through privately controlled channels (vital in allowing brands to protect their image). Underperforming products can quickly and easily be sold off to make room for better selling inventory.  This is especially helpful to retailers after holidays when they face high amounts of merchandise returns.  Buyers (such as discount retailers like TJ Max or Ross) are able to search for a brand's excess inventory and easily negotiate.  They are also able to discover inventory they would not otherwise have known about or have access to.  

Inturn earns revenue through subscription fees to its platform and takes a small percentage of each transaction.  The company was founded in May 2013 and is based in New York City.

Why I like Them

As retail becomes more competitive, faster paced, and business models like fast fashion continues to dominate the clothing industry, the ability of a brand to quickly get rid of its excess inventory for the next set of merchandise is vital.  Inventory management is critical for retailers, especially as turnover is faster with consumer taste becoming ever more fickle.  Inturn is the only firm out there offering brands modern software tools for excess inventory management, allowing for a much more efficient market.  Prior to Inturn, manual tools and processes  were used that were slow and created an inefficient market.

On the other side of the transaction, the retailer benefits as off-price merchandise is one area physical retailers are holding their own against eCommerce sales.  Discount retailers saw foot traffic grow in the last several years and forecasters expect discount retail to grow at a much faster pace than the rest of the industry for the next several years.  The trend seems to be that off-price retail is becoming the core business for many retailers such as Nordstrom.

This is an underserved, inefficient B2B process that will continue to grow, positioning Inturn nicely, especially as it expands its platform to other types of consumer products beyond apparel.   

Disclosure:  All information is from publicly available sources, I have not had any contact with a member of the company or its investors.