A company is promising to help shoppers search for used clothing across multiple marketplaces through its “secondhand search engine.” Beni said its partners include eBay, Poshmark, The RealReal, and ThredUp, Kidizen, and Grailed as well as brand-owned resale programs including Patagonia’s WornWear.
Shoppers who download the Beni browser extension or its mobile app can use it in one of three ways: browse, search, or alerts.
A shopper who has the Beni browser extension and finds an item they like will be shown resale deals whenever they’re available. Or, shoppers can use the search feature in the Beni App to see the deals from 40+ resale sites.
Shoppers can also set up an alert and have Beni notify them whenever a that item becomes available on a resale site.
In its FAQs, Beni explains one of the challenges of searching secondhand marketplaces: “The challenge with resale items online is that the listings don’t have unique identifiers (SKUs) that new products have on retail sites. This means that we rely on the AI to determine which resale items matches the product you’re looking at. Our AI model gives us a “match score” which we use to rank order to results by “relevancy.””
On Tuesday, the company announced the launch of the Beni iOS App, new features, and new partnerships, quoting Beni CEO Sarah Pinner:
“To make resale the norm, we aim to meet shoppers where they already shop and show them relevant resale alternatives. Our work with Vestiaire Collective, The RealReal and eBay, along with our newest partners, means unrivaled access to resale deals for our users. Beni is not only reshaping the landscape of secondhand shopping; it’s evolving into the premier gateway to a world where purchasing used is as effortless as buying new.”
Beni is free – it makes money through affiliate marketing relationships with resale marketplaces. “We earn commission fees on items purchased by way of Beni in return for driving traffic to the resale site,” it explains in its FAQs.
In the summer of 2022 (when it had only 16 resale partnerships), Beni posted the following YouTube video explaining how it works:
