Author: Vogue Business team in partnership with Ebay
The future of sustainable fashion relies on innovation. The startups working to find solutions for the industry today will be the ones to lead tomorrow. The Ebay Circular Fashion Fund seeks to spotlight those startup founders who have a vision for how to create a better fashion industry and get one step closer to sustainability.
Ebay Ventures, the investment arm of Ebay, has awarded $300,000 to Refiberd, the global winner of the Circular Fashion Fund, naming Sarika Bajaj, Refiberd’s co-founder and CEO, the Circular Fashion Innovator of the Year.
“We’re honoured to win Ebay’s first Circular Fashion Innovator of the Year Award. The investment from Ebay Ventures will help us close a significant round of fundraising for the business, allowing us to expand our technology to new recycling partners, strengthen our AI capabilities, and move faster towards our mission of enabling true textile-to-textile recycling,” said Bajaj, following the win. “The journey for a startup is tough, so having the mentorship and access to Ebay and the CFDA’s networks has already proven invaluable. With this added support we can accelerate our impact and help build a future where circular fashion is the norm — not the exception.”
“As the pioneering secondary marketplace, Ebay has been driving circularity in fashion since its inception 30 years ago,” Alexis Hoopes, VP and global head of fashion at Ebay, says. “It’s a critical time for the fashion industry, and Ebay’s Circular Fashion Fund — and the Ebay platform at large — are propelling the industry forward, enabling innovative ideas to help shape brand and consumer behaviours.”
The finalists, Sojo from the UK, Germany’s MOOT (Made Out of Trash), Australia-based Shopfront and the US’s Refiberd, each won initial rounds in the competition. Ebay partnered with the British Fashion Council (BFC), the Australian Fashion Council (AFC), the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Fashion Council Germany (FCG) to bring the fund to each country, inviting startups to pitch their businesses to a panel of influential judges and win $50,000 in local currency.
Ebay brought its Circular Fashion Fund competition to New York City on 25 March, in partnership with Vogue Business, where three finalists pitched their businesses to judges including Steven Kolb, CEO of the CFDA; Kirsty Keoghan, Ebay’s general manager of global fashion; fashion creator Wisdom Kaye; Brittany Sierra, founder and CEO of the Sustainable Fashion Forum; fashion designer John Bartlett; and Margherita Maccapani Missoni, founder of fashion label Maccapani.
Refiberd won the $50,000 prize, advancing to the finals, for her company’s plan to make textile-to-textile recycling more efficient and intelligent. Right now, Bajaj told the judges, clothing waste piles up all over the world with little chance of getting recycled, thanks to complex material blends that don’t easily break down to be remade into something else. The majority of fashion garment tags are also labelled incorrectly, she said, making it more difficult for textile recyclers to know what they’re working with. Refiberd uses hyperspectral imaging and artificial intelligence to examine and classify the material makeup of garments so they can be recycled.
The NYC judges also heard a pitch from Nancy Rhodes, founder of Alternew. Alternew is a digital platform that connects brands with local alteration and repair services, making it easier for brands to offer built-in services that help keep clothes in closets longer, with repair being a key component of circular fashion efforts.
“While resale and rental are growing, without after-sales services like tailoring, repair and personalisation, too many garments still end up unused or discarded. Our tech-enabled model makes these services scalable, transforming local tailors and craftspeople into key players in a circular future. The measurable impact includes more garments kept in circulation, more economic opportunity in underserved communities, and a scalable system that integrates seamlessly into resale and retail,” said Rhodes.
“Ebay’s Circular Fashion Fund is transforming the buying and selling experience by investing in the full lifecycle of a garment beyond just the resale transaction. Ebay’s commitment to circular fashion creates space for solutions like ours,” she added.
Meanwhile, Zahra Biabani, founder of In the Loop, demonstrated the need for her single-SKU clothing identification software. By breaking down pieces of clothing that end up in thrift stores and resale sites into a series of identifiable characteristics, In the Loop makes it easier to price and list single-SKU garments. This helps secondhand clothing sellers to move product more quickly, as well as create a pricing standard for resale goods.
“Our core mission at In the Loop is to reduce the friction in re-commerce through bringing automation and intelligence to the experience of selling used items. We measure impact in the reduction of time it takes to process and price a used item, which translates to the increased volume of used inventory businesses can sell and the number of pieces of garments that can find a ‘second home’,” said Biabini. “As a pioneer in circularity, Ebay’s access to resources and insights on the needs of buyers and sellers are unmatched. Through the Circular Fashion Fund, emergent and high-growth startups like us get a chance to benefit from these insights.”
The funding received by the winning companies is designed to scale the startups’ businesses to bring proof of concept to market. Ebay’s Circular Fashion Fund was launched in 2022 and has invested a total of $1.2 million into circular fashion startups, as well as offered 200 hours of mentoring to the founders who are working to make re-commerce a more viable part of the fashion industry.
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