Fleek

Market position

Fleek positions itself as infrastructure for the secondhand clothing trade, which sources describe as a $200-billion-plus industry through which up to 24 billion garments move annually, but which remains manual and opaque. Fortune notes that demand for vintage clothing currently outstrips supply, with Vinted, Depop and eBay scrapping selling fees to attract sellers, and quotes co-founder Arora saying supply is the industry's biggest constraint. Lead investor Burda Principal Investments, an earlier backer of Vinted, described Fleek as building infrastructure for the next generation of fashion. As of July 2026 the platform reported approximately 2,000 verified suppliers and more than 50,000 buyers across 100+ countries.

Fleek combines a transaction-backed B2B marketplace — buyer protection, included shipping, handled customs and duties, verified suppliers and quality-check centres in Karachi and Delhi — with a proprietary vision-language model for automated identification, defect detection and price/time-to-sell estimation, aimed at a supply chain otherwise described as secretive, fragmented, offline and inconsistently graded.

Technology

Fleek Sort is a custom computer vision-language model trained on four years of Fleek's own transaction data. It ingests photos taken with an ordinary smartphone — performing better with more images but able to work from a single front-facing photo — and identifies the garment's brand, style and category, flags defects such as rips or faulty seams, and estimates the clearing price and time to sell. Fleek says it built the model in-house because third-party models would have been prohibitively expensive at the volumes involved. The model is in use by graders in sorting hubs in Pakistan, India and Dubai, with pilots in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. The team is extending the technology from photos to video and studying application to conveyor belts in sorting facilities, though the founders note that robots able to sort and grade as fast as humans remain some way off. The model can spot obvious fakes, and Fleek also operates quality-check centres in Karachi and Delhi that inspect items.

Go-to-market

Fleek sells through a mobile app distributed via the Apple App Store and Google Play alongside its website, positioning itself as a replacement for charity-shop and car-boot sourcing. Onboarding is presented as a three-step flow: download the app, choose a bundle by category, then list items for resale. Supply-side growth comes from recruiting and verifying wholesale suppliers and graders, and the company displays supplier ratings and repeat-buyer counts. Part of the Series B is earmarked for growing its global network of suppliers and buyers and expanding engineering teams.

Buyers are vintage stores, online resellers on platforms such as eBay, Vinted and Depop, boutiques, professional resellers, larger retail chains and some brands, primarily in the U.S. and Europe. Suppliers are used-clothing wholesalers, rag-houses, graders and donation centres, concentrated in India, Pakistan and Dubai.

Geography

Headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Supply is concentrated in India, Pakistan and Dubai, where much of the world's secondhand clothing is sorted and graded; buyers are primarily in the U.S. and Europe, with the platform stating shipping to 90+ countries and reported activity across 100+ countries. Fleek Sort is deployed with graders in sorting hubs in Pakistan, India and Dubai, with pilots in the U.K., Europe and the U.S., and the company runs quality-check centres in Karachi and Delhi. Job postings are listed for London and remote roles including remote (US).

History

Fleek was founded in November 2021 by Abhi Arora (CEO) and Sanket Agarwal (CTO), who sold their first bundle that same month. The company joined Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. It spent roughly its first three years building the marketplace itself; about a year before the July 2026 Series B the founders began developing AI capabilities, producing the Fleek Sort model trained on four years of the company's own transaction data. Y Combinator's page cites TechCrunch coverage of a $20.4M raise in November 2024, and in July 2026 the company announced a $25M Series B that brought total funding to $45M.

Risks & controversies

The industry problem Fleek addresses includes fraud by intermediaries — Fortune recounts a Brick Lane store owner scammed out of more than $15,000 by an online broker. Guaranteeing authenticity remains a challenge for Fleek: its model can spot obvious fakes but the company also relies on manual quality-check centres in Karachi and Delhi. The company's site notes that new tariffs may apply to U.S. buyers, and that customs and duties are covered only for most countries. Regulatory change is framed as a potential tailwind: EU rules requiring separate textile collection and forthcoming rules prohibiting retailers from destroying unsold inventory should push more clothing into Fleek's channels. Note that third-party aggregator listings conflict on funding history — one secondary-market data page shows a $105.1M total raised and multiple undated Series B entries, which is inconsistent with the $45M total stated in primary press coverage.