ⓘ Featured image: Mohammad Sleimanm, Founder & CEO of Cartlow
Dubai-based re-commerce startup Cartlow, that lets users purchase pre-owned, refurbished, open box and clearance products through its mobile app, on Monday raised $2 million in a Pre-Series A funding round from Arzan Ventures, Vision Ventures, and other venture capitalists. Besides this, the company has launched a sister concern under the name ‘VASCART’.
Launched last year by Mohammad Sleimanm, Cartlow is focused on transforming and digitalising the pre-owned industry and eliminating unsustainable practices. Their aim is to build a scalable technology and operations platform to deliver a reliable and consistently high-quality product to the end consumers at an unbeatable price.
The company works alongside a series of well-trusted global brands and recognised household names, helping to turn-over their inventory, and reduce unsustainable practices by purchasing slow-moving and returned/pre-owned, or ‘open-box’ products at a low cost from partners who normally toss away items; disrupting a generation of ‘e-waste’. This allows Cartlow to then resell the items to consumers after grading, testing, certifying, and restoring them to their original condition. The items are then sold at the best prices on Cartlow’s website and applications, from TVs, laptops, white appliances to beauty, toys and fashion products, which are all safeguarded by warranty.
With VASCART, B2B business model, the company will provide retailers, brands, and distributors with a value-added service and an after-service market, to tackle some key issues faced by many partners in the region, and molding itself as a leader within the re-commerce industry targeted at distributors, retailers and directly with consumers to sell their old devices. The services include buyback solutions, liquidation services, warranty repair’s, extended warranty programme, refurbishing, quality control, and more. By establishing VASCART, Cartlow’s mission is to empower the ecosystem by building the capacity and the capability, adding value proposition through the model whilst supporting partners and other brands.
Typically, within the standard retail world, a product life cycle ends when the product is purchased, however, in reality, this is not the case since customer returns, end-of-life, and/or overstock products, which did not sell due to seasonality or underperformance, are inevitably discarded. This is where VASTCART’s concept will utilise the ‘reverse logistics’ mechanism.
Speaking of the developments, Mohammed Sleiman, Founder & CEO Cartlow, in a statement said,
“We are still in the early stages of learning how to bring new value to our customers by introducing re-commerce to the region. Our goal remains in continuing to solidify and extend our brand and customer base, since we first successfully launched Cartlow and now we have decided to create more opportunities by launching VASCART for retailers and distributors to benefit from, thereby enhancing their conversion rate and longtime value. We are determined to restructure the pre-owned, after-sales, and liquidation market in this region under the re-commence ecosystem and we will continue to do so by doing our best, to facilitate both consumers and retailers with endless solutions.”
The company claims that with an estimated GCC market size of $10 billion across all categories, Cartlow has crossed a number of 1 million sold items within its first year of operations, that has helped reduce a lot of e-waste and contributed towards the sustainability of the environment.
In April, Cartlow had raised an undisclosed six-figure investment from Arzan Venture Capital, Vision Ventures, and a group of angel investors.
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