Building a Circular Fashion Marketplace from Scratch

The Case for Circular Fashion

The fashion industry is broken. Fast fashion dominates, driving overproduction and waste. Consumers buy cheap, wear items 1-2 times, then discard. Landfills overflow with textile waste. Brands manufacture far from customers, creating supply chain opacity and labor exploitation.

Circular fashion offers a different model: secondhand, vintage, and community-driven commerce. Items that might be discarded are resold, reworn, and given second lives. The economics work: sellers enjoy higher prices than thrift stores; buyers enjoy lower prices than retail; platforms capture margin.

The opportunity was clear. Poshmark and Depop had proven the market. But both are US-focused and dominated by Western fashion. What about South Asian fashion? A massive, underserved market: 2+ billion people in South Asia, large diaspora communities globally, and rich, distinct aesthetic traditions (sari, salwar kameez, etc.) that aren't served by Poshmark/Depop.

Why Now? Why Me?

I'd spent 10+ years in enterprise ecommerce and marketplaces (Dropped Pin, Catch, Lasoo, Coles, GS1). I understood platform operations, seller dynamics, and logistics. But I was burned out on corporate structures, travel, and complexity.

I wanted to build something smaller, more focused, and aligned with my values: sustainability, community, accessibility. Circular fashion was that intersection. Needed was a concrete idea, credible market validation, and a team. I had all three.

The Validation That Launched It

Before diving in full-time, I validated the opportunity:

• Customer Research (Month 1-2): Interviewed 50+ South Asian women in San Francisco and India about fashion consumption. Pattern: they loved South Asian traditional wear (sari, suits) but found it hard to acquire; worn items gathered in closets; they wanted trusted platforms to buy and sell.
• Seller Research (Month 2-3): Talked to 30+ fashion sellers on Poshmark and Instagram. Many wanted to sell South Asian fashion but felt invisible on Western platforms. Clear frustration with discoverability.
• Competitive Analysis (Month 3): No direct competitor in South Asian circular fashion. Poshmark/Depop didn't prioritize it. Specialized sari sites existed but were ecommerce (new inventory only), not marketplaces. White space confirmed.
• MVP and Pilot (Month 4-5): Built barebones MVP (Shopify backend, manual listings). Recruited 10 sellers, 100 buyers. Took orders, managed fulfillment manually. Proved product-market fit: 40% of buyers made repeat purchases in first month.

By month 5, I was convinced. Left corporate job. Launched properly.

Identifying the Niche: South Asian Diaspora

Niches beat broad markets. A circular fashion marketplace for everyone sounds big but is impossibly competitive. A circular fashion marketplace specifically for South Asian women is smaller but ownable.

Why South Asian Diaspora?

• Underserved Market: Poshmark and Depop focus on mainstream Western fashion. South Asian fashion is an afterthought. This created opportunity.
• Distinct Aesthetic and Language: South Asian fashion has its own visual vocabulary, terminology, and quality indicators. Someone who understands this outranks generic fashion platforms for this segment.
• Community Strength: South Asian diaspora communities are tight-knit and word-of-mouth driven. If you build something valuable, community spreads it. My first users came through community networks: one woman told a friend, who told her sister, who told cousins. Organic growth came naturally.
• Market Size: 2 billion people in South Asia. Diaspora: 30+ million globally. Even capturing 1% is 300K+ users. Enormous total addressable market hiding in the niche.
• Economic Motivation: South Asian communities often face financial pressure. Secondhand and circular shopping is both sustainable and economically rational. Strong product-market fit.

Geographic Focus

I started with San Francisco (where I lived) and extended to major diaspora hubs: California, New York, Texas, UK, Canada, and India. Initial geographic concentration let me understand local community dynamics deeply before scaling nationally.

Category Focus: Traditional and Contemporary

South Asian fashion encompasses traditional (sari, salwar kameez, lehenga) and contemporary (jeans, dresses with South Asian aesthetics). I focused on traditional first (less competition, stronger demand) with plans to expand to contemporary later.

The Arc: From Dropped Pin to PurvX

This is my second marketplace venture. The first was Dropped Pin, a fashion ecommerce site launched in early 2010s India. It taught me invaluable lessons about building in emerging markets, but ultimately failed for reasons relevant to PurvX's success.

Dropped Pin: The First Venture

The Idea: India's first curated fashion ecommerce site. Hand-picked designers and brands, high-quality images, editorial content. Positioned as "the good taste filter" for Indian fashion.

What Worked: India had zero ecommerce in 2010. We were first in fashion. Brand partnerships came easily. Team was talented. We grew to decent scale (100K+ orders/year) despite no VC funding.

What Broke: Logistics in India was brutal. Delivery took 3-4 weeks. Returns were expensive and slow. Unit economics never worked. We ran at a loss on nearly every order. More fundamentally, I was too focused on brand prestige and curatorial control. We missed the opportunity to enable sellers and create network effects. When actual ecommerce platforms (Flipkart, Amazon) arrived with VC backing, we had no competitive moat.

The Failure: After 3 years of subsistence-level income and declining growth, I shut it down in 2013.

Lessons From Dropped Pin Applied to PurvX

• Marketplace Over Inventory: Dropped Pin carried inventory; I took all merchant risk and logistics burden. PurvX is pure marketplace; sellers own inventory. This flips the economics entirely.
• Network Effects Over Curation: Dropped Pin relied on my taste; limited to what I could personally source. PurvX is community-driven; sellers and buyers create content and discovery. Scales exponentially without my bottleneck.
• Logistics Partnerships Over Proprietary Infrastructure: Dropped Pin fought logistics; PurvX leverages existing providers (India Post, DHL in US, etc.). Faster and cheaper.
• Niche Over Broad: Dropped Pin was "Indian fashion"; too broad. PurvX is "South Asian circular fashion"; specific enough to dominate.
• Capital Discipline: Dropped Pin burned through angel funding trying to scale too fast. PurvX was bootstrapped; every dollar had to count. This forced operational discipline.

The Enterprise Years: Training Ground

Between Dropped Pin (2013) and PurvX (2022), I spent 9 years in enterprise: Catch Group, Lasoo, Coles, GS1. This wasn't a detour. I learned:

• Cross-Functional Execution: How to align product, engineering, merchandising, operations, finance around a goal. Critical for marketplaces.
• Scaling Operations: From 10 sellers to 100+. Lasoo's 60+ retailers in 6 months taught me systemic seller onboarding.
• Data Standards: GS1 experience showed me the importance of product data quality and how to enforce standards without alienating sellers.
• Customer Dynamics: Coles' $1.1B P&L taught me that operational excellence and unit economics matter more than flashy features.
• Founder Insight: Working for others showed me I didn't want to be a professional executive. I wanted to build my own thing.

Building From Zero: San Francisco and Chennai

In May 2022, I left corporate. By July, PurvX was live. How?

The Team

This is where the 9 years of network mattered. I assembled a small, trusted team:

• Me: Strategy, product, seller operations, early customer support. Wore every hat.
• Co-Founder (Engineering): Old colleague from Lasoo. Capable full-stack engineer. We paid him equity, minimal salary. He had some savings and believed in the vision.
• Contractor (India Ops): Engineer in Chennai I'd worked with on Coles' dark stores. Part-time initially. Managed India logistics, seller recruitment, early fulfillment coordination. Also took equity.

Core team: 1.5 full-time, 1 part-time. Total burn: ~$20K/month. This was possible because we leveraged existing technology and focused ruthlessly on essentials.

Technology Stack: Speed Over Perfection

We didn't build custom everything. We combined existing services:

• Commerce Platform: Shopify. Not a marketplace platform, but good enough for MVP. Seller storefronts + order management.
• Marketplace Layer: Custom Node.js backend for multi-seller logic, search, ratings, messaging.
• Frontend: React for buyer experience, React Native for iOS/Android.
• Fulfillment: Manual initially. We coordinated pickups with logistics partners (India Post, DHL, FedEx). As volume grew, we built lightweight automation, but never complex WMS.
• Payment: Stripe (US), Razorpay (India), PayPal. Letting established payment processors handle complexity.

This stack wasn't elegant but was fast. We could prototype, test, and iterate rapidly. Trade-off: technical debt. But at MVP stage, speed trumped engineering perfection.

Geographic Split: SF and Chennai

San Francisco (where I lived) focused on US market operations: US seller recruitment, US buyer acquisition, US customer support. Chennai (Ops Co-Founder) focused on India: product sourcing, seller recruitment, India logistics partnerships.

This split made sense logistically (sellers and buyers in same timezone) but required disciplined asynchronous communication. Key principle: CI/CD for operations, not just code. Code deployed daily; operational processes deployed weekly. Clear handoff docs, async decision-making, minimal meetings.

Product-Led Growth: 800% in 6 Months

By Month 6, we had 800% user growth. This was organic, driven by product excellence and community. No paid ads (couldn't afford them). No VC. Just good product.

The Product Principles

We optimized for three things:

• Discovery: How do buyers find items? We built sophisticated search and browse, with facets specific to South Asian fashion (sari type, blouse style, occasion, etc.). Search was better than Poshmark for this category. This was leverage.
• Trust: Circular fashion is secondhand. Buyers are anxious. We made transparency easy: high-res photos from multiple angles, detailed condition descriptions (like Depop), seller ratings, guaranteed return period, money-back guarantee. Reduced buyer risk.
• Community: Seller profiles felt like artist showcases. Sellers could write bios, share their story, display favorite items. Buyers connected with sellers, not just products. This created repeat business and loyalty.

Growth Mechanics: Not Viral, But Sticky and Referral-Driven

800% growth in 6 months sounds like viral. It wasn't. It was strong product-market fit leading to:

• Repeat Purchase: 50% of first-month buyers returned within 30 days. High repeat rate meant steady growth from activation.
• Referral: Users naturally invited friends. "Found amazing sari on PurvX; you'll love it too." No paid referral program; just genuine enthusiasm. Word-of-mouth in community networks is the strongest distribution.
• SEO: We built for search. South Asian fashion + secondhand + "sari marketplace" searches ranked us top 3 within 3 months. SEO is slow but (almost) free.
• Content: Blog posts: "Guide to Sari Folds," "How to Date Your Lehenga," "Affordable South Asian Fashion." Niche, educational content that ranked for long-tail keywords and brought traffic.

Why We Avoided Paid Ads

We had no budget, so this was forced frugality. But it became a feature, not a bug. Organic growth forced us to build a great product. Paid ads mask product problems; organic growth only happens when product is genuinely good. We had to earn every user.

By Month 6, when we could have afforded some marketing spend, CAC was irrelevant. Organic LTV was so high we didn't need ads. This changed later, but organic foundation was invaluable.

Seller Experience and 3.2x Conversion

800% buyer growth is meaningless without seller supply. We obsessed over seller experience. This was leverage.

The Seller Problem

Poshmark and Depop are buyer-first platforms. Sellers are an afterthought. Seller experience is minimal: basic listings, simple messaging, community engagement tools. For mainstream fashion, this works. For South Asian fashion, it doesn't. Sellers felt invisible.

PurvX Seller Philosophy

We positioned sellers as partners, not vendors. Key features:

• Seller Storefronts: Each seller gets a curated storefront. Profile bio, follower counts, featured items. Sellers could build personal brand, not just sell items. This drove seller pride and repeat followers.
• Seller Ratings and Reviews: Public ratings visible to buyers. Transparency incentivized quality. Sellers competed on quality and customer service, not just price. Good sellers stood out.
• Seller Tools: Analytics dashboard showing views, conversion rates, trending items. Data-driven insights helped sellers optimize. Most secondhand platforms have zero analytics; we made this core.
• Community Features: Seller community section where sellers shared tips, styling ideas, sourcing advice. This created belonging and reduced the isolation of selling online.

Seller Onboarding and 3.2x Conversion

We built seller onboarding as deliberately as buyer onboarding. Within 12 months, we improved seller conversion 3.2x. How?

• Personal Outreach: Initial sellers (first 50) were personally recruited by me and India ops. Sent emails, made calls, explained PurvX vision. Personal touch matters.
• Seller Education: New sellers got onboarding videos, email sequences, one-on-one calls. "How to take good photos," "How to price items," "How to provide great customer service." This reduced seller anxiety about success.
• Traffic Guarantees: New sellers got featured placement for first 30 days. Guaranteed initial traffic meant their first items sold. Success breeds confidence; confidence breeds retention.
• Payout Transparency: Simple, transparent payouts. No confusion about take-rate or deductions. Weekly payouts for high-volume sellers. Sellers knew what they'd earn. Trust mattered.
• Seller Support: Email and Slack support for sellers. Responsive (usually 2-4 hours). This was rare in secondhand platforms and generated goodwill and loyalty.

Retention and Expansion

Getting sellers to sign up was step 1. Getting them to succeed and stay was step 2.

• Performance Reviews: Monthly, we reviewed each seller's metrics. GMV, conversion rate, customer satisfaction. If underperforming, we diagnosed: was it traffic? Data quality? Pricing? Then helped fix it.
• Category Expansion: Successful sellers in one category (e.g., sari) were encouraged to expand to adjacent (salwar kameez, jewelry). Expansion was easier than acquiring new sellers.
• Power Seller Program: Top 5-10% of sellers got special treatment: higher payouts, priority support, co-marketing. Recognition drove motivation.

Competing with Poshmark and Depop

Two 800-pound gorillas dominated secondhand fashion. How could a bootstrapped startup compete?

Positioning: Niche, Not Broad

We didn't try to be better than Poshmark overall. Impossible. Instead, we were best-in-niche: South Asian circular fashion. For South Asian dresses/items, PurvX was superior: better search, better seller tools, better community. For everything else, Poshmark and Depop were fine.

This niche positioning meant we didn't need to beat them on features or scale. We just needed to be undeniably better for our segment. Network effects worked in our favor: more South Asian fashion sellers wanted to be on PurvX (where they'd be visible to the right audience) vs. Poshmark (where they'd be buried). More sellers attracted more buyers from our community. Defensibility emerged.

Why Sellers Preferred PurvX

• Better Discovery: On Poshmark, a sari listing competed with 100K jeans listings. Buried. On PurvX, same listing was highlighted to people specifically searching South Asian fashion. Visibility = conversion.
• Better Community: Poshmark's community was generic. PurvX's community was India-specific, culturally resonant, and supportive. Sellers felt at home.
• Better Tools: Seller dashboards and analytics were better on PurvX. Data-driven sellers preferred us.

Why Buyers Preferred PurvX

• Better Search: Faceted search for South Asian fashion (sari type, blouse style, occasion, region of origin). Poshmark's generic search couldn't parse these nuances.
• More Relevant Inventory: Deep inventory in South Asian fashion, not scattered across millions of listings.
• Community and Culture: Buying on PurvX felt like supporting community sellers. Emotional connection beyond transaction.

The Competitive Moat

By Month 12, we had defensible competitive advantage:

• Seller Base: 500+ South Asian fashion sellers. These sellers had invested in the platform, learned the tools, developed followers. Switching cost was real.
• Search and Data: 50K+ listings with South Asian-specific attributes (sari type, blouse fit, occasion). Search algorithms optimized for this. Poshmark would have to completely rebuild to match.
• Community: Buyer community around South Asian fashion. Followers, repeat purchases, word-of-mouth. This was hard to replicate.

Bootstrapping Discipline: How to Build Without Venture Capital

PurvX was completely bootstrapped. No VC funding. No angel investors. No friends/family round. Just revenue and discipline. This imposed constraints that became strengths.

Runway Discipline

First 6 months, burn was $20K/month. Revenue: $0. This gave us ~6 months of runway on personal savings. Not comfortable, but enough to reach traction.

By Month 6, we had revenue: take-rate on buyer/seller transactions. Not profitable, but positive cash flow. This extended runway indefinitely.

Lean Operations

Every dollar mattered. We made deliberate trade-offs:

• No Offices: Worked from home. Me in SF, co-founder in SF, India ops person in Chennai. Saved $5-10K/month.
• No Marketing: Couldn't afford it. Built organic growth instead. This actually improved product (forced us to build something remarkable).
• Minimal Staff: 1.5 full-time, 1 part-time. Did work that VCs would hire 20 people for. Inefficient sometimes but forced prioritization.
• Cheap Tools: Open-source software where possible, cheap SaaS tools. Didn't rent expensive enterprise software.
• Manual Processes: For the first year, fulfillment was manual. We coordinated pickups with logistics partners, managed returns, resolved disputes manually. Expensive in labor but cheap in capital. As volume grew, we automated, but we started lean.

Revenue Obsession

With no funding runway, we had to reach revenue quickly. This discipline mattered:

• Take-Rate:** Charged 15% take-rate from sellers, 10% from buyers. Not aggressive, but enough to cover ops.
• Multiple Revenue Streams: Take-rate was core, but we explored other: seller features (optional paid tools), sponsored listings, affiliates. Multiple streams reduced dependency on one lever.
• Unit Economics Focus: We tracked CAC (customer acquisition cost), LTV (lifetime value), payback period relentlessly. Organic growth meant CAC ~$0, LTV was very high. Unit economics were beautiful.