E-commerce giant eBay has acquired second-hand clothing seller startup Twice, Re/code reported Monday.
Twice, one of Inc. Magazine?s 30 under 30 companies this year, allows sellers to ship a box of clean used clothes to the company. Twice offers a single price for the entire contents of the box and if the sellers accepts, the company uses its house-built software program Vulcan to price the items and upload listings to Twice?s website.
The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2012, was valued at $23.1 million as of April and had 48 employees at that time, according to Inc.’s 30 Under 30 profile of the company.?
EBay intends to incorporate the technology behind Vulcan into the larger company?s own assisted-selling service, Valet, according to a representative of eBay. The company intends to hire roughly 10 of the company?s employees, including members of the startup?s technical team and Twice co-founders Noah Ready-Campbell and Calvin Young, for the company?s seller experience team, the representative confirmed.
The Twice website will shut down later this month, according to eBay.
Ready-Campbell in a statement said he was ?thrilled to join eBay to help bring our vision to an even larger audience.?
He described eBay?s newly appointed President and CEO Devin Wenig?s vision for the role of assisted selling at eBay as ?exhilarating.?
EBay?s vice president of seller experience, Jordan Sweetnam, said in a statement that the acquisition would serve eBay in its efforts to ?unlock the value? of the ?billions of dollars worth of unwanted and unused items in people?s possession.?
News of the acquisition coincides with today?s split between eBay and PayPal. EBay announced in September that the two companies would become independent, and today the breakup became official.
Read more at?INC.
