Encore is an AI-powered search engine for your thrifting needs

Date:

Share post:


Former Apple engineer Alex Ruber and former Twitter and Asana engineer Parth Chopra first met on Y Combinator’s founder match platform, then met in person at a thrift store for shopping. They later went on a thrift store shopping trip where they talked about solving problems with finding the right product in the online space.

Many consumers struggle to find the right item without spending hours on Instagram. To address this, the duo is building the search engine Encore, which lets users search for secondhand items from different sources. The startup is currently part of Y Combinator’s first-ever fall batch.

“The entire secondhand shopping market is really fragmented. There are hundreds of resources out there, such as Depop, Mercari, ThredUp, eBay, Craigslist, and more. It’s hard for consumers to sift through them all to try and get to the product you are looking for. So we wanted to remove that friction for users,” Ruber said on a call with TechCrunch.

Image Credits:Encore

Both Ruber and Chopra are immigrants, he said, and they’ve been used to spending time and money at thrift stores.

But thrifting isn’t easy. When Ruber tried to find a specific jacket from a TV show (Carmy’s patchwork jacket from “The Bear”), he started thinking about building a product to help him with that. He also wanted to look for a co-founder working in the circular economy space. He noted that Chopra was a great match because he was into fashion and thrifting.

“For me, there was also personal interest because my mom used to take me to flea markets every Sunday. I bought a lot of stuff from those places, including a piano, when I started to learn the instrument. The core idea behind both flea markets and Encore is about finding a hidden gem,” the former Apple engineer noted.

On Encore, you can type your query and get matches from multiple resources, including Poshmark, the RealReal, Grailed, Etsy, and eBay. Because Encore uses a large language model tech, you can type a query like “Show me a dress that Emily wore in ‘Emily in Paris’ Season 3 Episode 4.”

The search engine also shows partial prompts such as “Outfit inspo for” and “Shop from the Show.” When you tap on them, you can complete the prompt through auto-populated suggestions or your own words. Mainly this is to show users the different kinds of search terms they can use and avoid a blank page when users don’t yet understand the search engine’s capabilities.

foryou
Image Credits: Encore

Ruber noted that sentence length can vary, sometimes by a lot. Some people just key in a simple sentence like “Show me jeans” while others write a detailed description like “I am a 6’2″ person who skies and looking for skier pants under $100 with no big logos on them.”

The secondhand retail market is on an upward growth curve, with analysts projecting it to reach $73 billion in the U.S. and $350 billion globally by 2028. A report by online thrift store ThredUp notes that online secondhand resale would account for half of the secondhand market in 2025.

Encore processes over 50,000 searches per month and is seeing 26% month-on-month growth for searches and 15% growth in clicks.

The startup currently relies on affiliate shares for revenue generation. However, the company is also experimenting with a $3 per month subscription providing unlimited searches with advanced models, finding items by uploading images, and offering support via email and chat.



Source link

Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden is a news writer for LinkDaddy News. She writes health, sport, tech, and more. Some of her favorite topics include the latest trends in fitness and wellness, the best ways to use technology to improve your life, and the latest developments in medical research.

Recent posts

Related articles

A company is now developing human washing machines

Forget cold plunges. The new flex could soon be human washing machines. According to one of Japan’s oldest...

Texas AG opens investigation into advertising group that Elon Musk sued for ‘boycotting’ X

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Thursday he is opening an investigation into the World Federation...

American Airlines is deploying new tech to shame boarding line cutters

American Airlines has a new tactic for shaming boarding line cutters: A loud beeper. CNBC reports that the...

Hackers break into Andrew Tate’s online ‘university,’ steal user data and flood chats with emojis

Hackers have breached an online course founded by ostensible influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, leaking data...

Apple is reportedly building a more conversational Siri powered by LLMs

Apple is developing a new version of its voice assistant, Siri, powered by advanced large language models...

Future Google supplier Kairos gets approval to build two small nuclear reactors

Nuclear startup Kairos Power received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start construction on two...

Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India

Zepto has secured $350 million in new funding, its third round of financing in six months, as...

YouTube Shorts’ Dream Screen feature can now generate AI video backgrounds

YouTube announced on Thursday that its Dream Screen feature for Shorts now lets you create AI-generated video...