Faircado Raises $3.3 Million for AI-Powered reCommerce Platform
Faircado has raised €3 million (about $3.3 million) to continue building its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered reCommerce platform.
“Faircado exists to empower every consumer to buy better — for their wallet and for the planet — by easily switching from buying new to buying secondhand,” the company said in a Tuesday (May 28) post on LinkedIn.
The funding round was led by World Fund, according to a Tuesday blog post.
Faircado’s AI-powered browser extension is designed to “solve the secondhand problem” by helping users find preowned goods, according to the post.
When added to Chrome, the browser extension searches 50 million products from more than 55 partners to find preowned or refurbished products, according to the company’s website. It searches electronics, books, clothes and other products.
As users browse an eCommerce site, Faircado’s browser extension collects the product image, title and brand and uses AI to compare these attributes to the resale products available from its partners, per the company’s FAQ page.
Faircado’s AI bot, Gregor, then helps shoppers find preowned products that match these items, according to the page.
“Gregor is like your personal shopping buddy,” the company said in its FAQs. “He’s been trained to find secondhand items that match what you’re searching for, even when those items don’t have the usual special codes.”
The service is free to users, while sellers pay a commission to Faircado on each sale, the FAQ page said. The company’s partners include eBay,Back Market, Grailed, Rebuy,Vestiaire Collective and other secondhand platforms.
When announcing its investment in Faircado in a Tuesday post on LinkedIn, World Fund said: “World Fund’s Tim Schumacher will join Faircado’s board — bringing his experience scaling Ecosia and eyeo (the firm behind AdBlock) to this exciting brand.”
This announcement comes at a time when many digital resale platforms are growing as consumers’ budgetary pressures prompt them to seek lower-priced options.
At the same time, high-income shoppers are disproportionately growing their adoption of secondhand retail channels.
In the United States, more than 4 in 10 consumers bought a used item in the last 12 months, and 31% sold a used item during the same period, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report: Tracking Consumer Use of Supplemental Income Sources.”
