Corina Marshall, leveraging over a decade of experience navigating the complexities of retail digital marketing, identified a profound chasm between the technological sophistication of frontline retail operations and the antiquated methods governing reverse logistics and excess inventory management. This realization, stemming from 11 years immersed in the sector, catalyzed the founding of Another in 2024. The nascent software company, which specializes in streamlining the disposition of unsold or surplus products—often referred to as off-channel inventory—has successfully secured $2.5 million in a seed funding round. The investment was co-led by Anthemis FIL and Westbound, providing the crucial capital required to accelerate product development and strategically expand the engineering and sales teams. Another is positioning itself as an essential tool for brands striving to maximize asset value and minimize waste in an increasingly volatile global retail environment.
The core challenge Marshall seeks to address is the debilitating inefficiency plaguing the secondary market. While major brands routinely rely on discount channels, such as off-price giants like Nordstrom Rack or specialized liquidators, to move volume, these transactions frequently result in significant margin erosion. The difficulty arises from the fragmented, manual processes currently employed. Inventory designated as excess is typically scattered across multiple distribution centers, returns processing facilities, and dedicated overflow warehouses. Retail teams lack a unified, real-time perspective on the true volume, condition, and market demand for these items, forcing them into a cycle of educated guesswork regarding optimal pricing and timing for disposition.
Marshall highlighted the critical temporal lag inherent in current systems. "Too much time passes between each step of the off-channel inventory funnel, making it difficult to move products to the destinations that are most favorable for the brands and retailers," she noted, underscoring that speed is paramount when dealing with depreciating assets like seasonal apparel or quickly outdated electronics. In the high-stakes environment of secondary markets, pricing is inherently dynamic, shifting rapidly based on consumer demand fluctuations and the arrival of competing surplus stock. Success in optimizing sales velocity through channels like branded outlets or third-party marketplaces demands immediate access to granular data and seamless operational coordination, ensuring merchandise flows from the point of initial identification to the end buyer with maximum efficiency.
Another’s proprietary software system is engineered to inject technological sophistication into this crucial yet neglected domain. It achieves this by acting as a central nervous system for off-channel operations, integrating directly with a business’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), warehouse management systems (WMS), and crucial returns management software. By centralizing disparate data streams—encompassing everything from initial customer returns data and inventory location to historical markdown performance and real-time market pricing signals—Another creates a single source of truth. This holistic view empowers cross-functional teams, from finance to logistics, to execute data-driven decisions swiftly, ultimately improving recovery rates and reducing holding costs.
The Background Context: The Retail Inventory Glut
To fully appreciate the urgency of the solution offered by Another, one must examine the macro-economic and logistical pressures that have inflated the excess inventory crisis over the past several years. The retail sector globally has grappled with extreme volatility, largely driven by the "bullwhip effect" following the initial phases of the pandemic. Retailers initially cut orders drastically during lockdowns, leading to shortages. When demand surged unexpectedly in 2021 and 2022, they overcompensated, placing massive orders to secure supply chains. This subsequent over-ordering, coupled with shifting consumer habits (a pivot back to services and experiences), high inflation, and logistical delays that brought seasonal goods in late, created an unprecedented inventory glut.
This problem transcends mere inconvenience; it represents a substantial financial burden. Conservative estimates place the annual loss incurred by retailers globally due to markdowns, obsolescence, and liquidation at hundreds of billions of dollars. For apparel alone, the global market for excess inventory, including gray market goods and factory overruns, is vast and often opaque. Brands selling directly to bulk resellers often face steep discounts—sometimes recovering only pennies on the dollar—to clear stock quickly, a process known as liquidation. This fire sale approach not only erodes profits but can also damage brand perception, particularly for luxury or aspirational labels, by flooding the market with deeply discounted merchandise.
The operational complexities compound the financial hit. Traditional methods of inventory valuation—often based on averaging or standard cost models—fail when assets are aging and dispersed. Teams struggle to accurately forecast the remaining useful life or potential recovery value of a specific SKU located across different geographies. This lack of sophisticated valuation tools means that opportunities to route specific items to the highest-value channel (e.g., selling near-new items through a branded resale program versus bulk liquidation) are frequently missed, simply because the data required for that granular decision-making is inaccessible or siloed.
Industry Implications and Strategic Positioning
Another’s approach is not merely about facilitating sales; it is a strategic maneuver designed to optimize the entire reverse logistics value chain. Corina Marshall emphasizes the company’s focus on intervening much earlier in the inventory lifecycle, ideally before brands feel compelled to resort to bulk resellers. This proactive stance is crucial because once inventory enters the deep liquidation channel, the potential for maximizing value is severely limited, and deep discounting becomes inevitable.
The secondary market for fashion and consumer goods is intensely competitive, featuring established players and new technology entrants. Marshall acknowledges competition, citing marketplaces like Ghost, which also aid brands in selling unsold inventory. However, Another differentiates itself by focusing less on being a transaction marketplace and more on being an intelligence layer that powers strategic decision-making across all channels.
"Another’s technology provides real-time data and insights that give teams confidence in when, where, and how to move inventory, enabling smarter decisions that maximize value rather than defaulting to liquidation," Marshall stated. This shift from "defaulting to liquidation" to "value maximization" is the paradigm change the platform aims to enforce. By providing prescriptive analytics—recommending, for instance, that a specific batch of size Medium sweaters be sent immediately to a specific regional outlet store based on local sell-through data, rather than being consolidated for national liquidation—the system ensures that assets are monetized optimally.
The strategic implication here is a move toward true channel orchestration. Retailers are increasingly utilizing a complex matrix of disposition methods: dedicated outlet stores, online flash sale sites, wholesale to off-price retailers (like Nordstrom Rack or TJX companies), specialized resale platforms, and direct-to-consumer rental programs. Managing this complex web requires an agile technological backbone capable of assessing the net realized value (NRV) of each item across all potential routes, factoring in logistical costs, time-to-sale, and brand perception impact. Another aims to be the brain that calculates this optimal routing in real-time.
Expert-Level Analysis: Digital Transformation of Reverse Logistics
The investment in platforms like Another signals a fundamental digital transformation within the realm of reverse logistics—an area historically reliant on spreadsheets and legacy supply chain software. Expert analysis suggests that modern inventory disposition requires the convergence of advanced data science, machine learning (ML), and robust integration capabilities.
Traditional supply chain systems (like SAP or Oracle) excel at managing forward logistics (getting new products to market) but often fail when inventory flow reverses or becomes non-linear, as is the case with returns and excess stock. The dynamic pricing algorithms employed by Another are crucial here. Unlike static pricing models, dynamic pricing in the secondary market must account for seasonality, product category saturation, remaining shelf life, and competitor pricing in real-time. This level of complexity is impossible to manage manually, especially across thousands of SKUs and multiple geographic destinations.
Furthermore, the integration with returns management systems (RMS) is perhaps the most powerful feature. The moment a customer initiates a return, data begins flowing into Another. The system can assess the item’s condition, determine if it can be immediately restocked for full price, or if it must be downgraded to excess inventory. By capturing this data at the source, retailers can significantly reduce the time products spend languishing in processing centers. This rapid triage process is vital; for apparel, the difference between selling an item at a 30% discount immediately and selling it at an 80% markdown six months later is substantial.
The rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements further amplifies the need for intelligent inventory disposition. A major critique leveled against the retail industry, particularly fast fashion, is the vast amount of unsold product that ends up in landfills, or is incinerated, due to the prohibitive costs and logistical headaches of finding a viable secondary market quickly enough. By enhancing profitability and reducing the friction involved in moving stock, platforms like Another directly contribute to lowering retail waste. This dual benefit—profitability and sustainability—is increasingly attractive to investors and consumers alike. The technology effectively creates an auditable trail of ethical disposition, moving beyond simple compliance and toward genuine operational sustainability.
Future Impact and Trends: The Circular Economy Catalyst
The capital injection secured by Another will primarily be channeled into scaling the technology platform and expanding the team, ensuring the system can handle the massive data volumes generated by tier-one retailers. The future trajectory of retail is undeniably circular, and technology is the primary accelerator of this shift.
Another’s success hinges on its ability to catalyze the broader movement toward circular retail models. By making the process of recovering value from existing assets highly efficient and profitable, the platform de-risks investments in resale, rental, and refurbishment programs. When a retailer can confidently calculate the expected return on investment for diverting returned or excess goods into a secondary channel, rather than a landfill, those channels become financially viable and scalable.
The broader societal impact is significant. As Marshall articulated, the system creates a "win for everyone involved." Consumers gain access to better prices and greater product optionality, moving away from a high-waste, high-price model. Brands and retailers improve their core profitability metrics by turning liabilities into assets, simultaneously enhancing their sustainability credentials by reducing physical waste.
Looking ahead, the integration of AI will likely become even more sophisticated. Future iterations of inventory disposition technology will move beyond prescriptive analytics to incorporate predictive modeling that anticipates future inventory bottlenecks based on macroeconomic forecasts, changing consumer sentiment (tracked via social media and search data), and climate modeling (affecting seasonal stock). The ability to predict which items are likely to become excess inventory three to six months out allows retailers to adjust upstream ordering or manufacturing processes, addressing the problem at its source, rather than merely optimizing the reaction.
The success of companies like Another signals a maturation of the retail technology landscape. Inventory management is no longer viewed solely as a cost center but as a strategic asset deserving of the same advanced technological investment previously reserved for e-commerce storefronts and targeted digital advertising. As the global retail industry continues to navigate economic headwinds and increasing consumer demand for sustainable practices, intelligent platforms that maximize asset recovery—like the one Corina Marshall has launched—will become indispensable components of the modern retail tech stack, transforming the hidden world of excess inventory into a critical engine for sustainable growth.