Going Green - Environmentally Friendly Shopping

Millennial and Generation Z shoppers are changing the game! Shraysi Tandon, a millennial herself, driven by the same desire for sustainable options, is an expert in ecommerce and available to discuss the trend toward more environmentally friendly shopping. A former business journalist, Shraysi is Co-Founder and CEO of Kidsy, an ecommerce company that resales children’s overstock and open-box liquidation merchandise.

57% of Millennials and Gen Z shoppers told Drapers in 2023 that sustainability was an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Other research shows 75% of Gen Z factors in sustainability when shopping, while nearly half (47%) refuse to buy from non-sustainable brands. These trends have been a boom for the Circular Economy, which includes companies that resale returned and liquidation merchandise. Not only are these retailers' helping consumers save money, but they’re also keeping tons of waste out of landfills!

Shraysi and her company, Kidsy, work within this reality each and every day, giving overstock and open-box liquidation merchandise a second life! They’re seeing this trend first-hand, even popular with investors who just put up $1M to keep this successful business growing far into the future!

I had a chance to interview Shraysi to learn more.

1.) Can you share a little bit about how the Circular Economy and resale help limit waste?

The circular economy is any business model that involves reusing an item by reselling, leasing, sharing, refurbishing or recycling. Kidsy in particular is focused on reselling customer returns and overstock baby and kids products and in doing so we extend the life of a product and divert it from ending up in the landfills. Customer returns across all categories account for almost 10 billion pounds of landfill every year and most of these products are either brand new or very gently used with years of life left in them. 

2.) What is reverse logistics and how does it fuel growth?

Reverse logistics is the process of returning a product from a consumer back to the retailer or manufacturer's warehouse it originated from. Having a reverse logistics partner handle all the logistics and touchpoints across a supply chain helps the retailer recoup some of the costs especially when there is a reseller partner in place.

3.) How can the Circular Economy help reverse financial losses?

Majority of retailers do not restock customer returns because it is too labor intensive and capital intensive to do so. When an online purchase is returned to a store like Amazon or Target for example, it experiences around six touch points as it makes it way back through the supply chain back to the store, each touch point is associated with a dollar amount so by the time it reaches the store, it is often too expensive for the retailer to restock it. With resellers now playing a big role in the circular model, retailers are able to redirect these returns straight to resellers like us (Kidsy) - the item arrives at our warehouse, it is inspected, categorized, graded and then sold to customers across the country. A lot of brands work with us because they are able to stem financial losses that would typically originate from a customer return, still preserve their brand integrity and allow their products (most of which are new) to have a second life. 

Shraysi Tandon, Co-Founder/CEO at Kidsy is a career business journalist turned documentary filmmaker turned startup founder. She has lived and worked all over the world (5 countries, 12 cities and counting) and is actively involved with two nonprofits. Inspired by an innate curiosity about people and culture; driven by the challenge of scaling new learning curves and motivated to do work that is impactful, Shraysi is a strong believer that kindness (not flattery) will get you everywhere.