Pickle Raises $8M to Make Your Neighbors’ Closet (and Yours) Easy to Rent

Introduction

Announcing our seed funding round, co-led by Craft Ventures and FirstMark Capital with participation from Burst Capital, to grow and enhance Pickle’s peer-to-peer rental marketplace.
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‍Two years ago, we left our jobs to take a big risk. We wanted to help people (including us) make better shopping decisions. We launched the initial version of Pickle (we refer to it as Pickle 1.0) to crowdsource opinions on each other’s purchases. A major theme kept surfacing: most people were recommending items already in their closet; “this is my favorite dress, I just wore it to my friend’s wedding,” or “this brand is my go-to because it’s flattering on everyone.”

The lightbulb went off. We needed to connect a community of shareable closets and do it in a way that was as dynamic and easy as borrowing from a friend — even if it meant you needed it in an hour. So we learned how to code, building the experience and functionality we knew people wanted, took 4,000+ subway rides hand-delivering items from closets across NYC, and wore many other hats to relaunch Pickle as the fashion rental marketplace it is today.

We’re incredibly proud and grateful; in the past year, we’ve grown our community to tens of thousands, brought 50,000+ items from 2,000+ coveted brands into circulation, powered lucrative side hustles, and introduced a new way to shop at a time when so many of us are grappling with the financial and environmental costs of keeping pace with microtrends, dressing for more occasions, and showcasing our lives (and what we wear) regularly on social media.

What we built — the brand love, the growth, the solution — caught the attention of marketplace luminaries who were eager to help us advance our mission/vision of making it easy, fun, affordable and accessible to rent items from one another.

Fast forward, and we couldn’t be more excited to announce an $8 million capital investment co-led by Craft Ventures and FirstMark Capital, with participation from Burst Capital. The expertise and support of the team behind us, including our new board member Rick Heitzmann (founder FirstMark Capital), Jeff Fluhr (founder Craft Ventures and former founder/CEO of StubHub), and Geoff Donaker (founder Burst Capital and former Yelp COO), will be instrumental in helping us grow and deliver even more value to our community.

Image courtesy of Pickle community meetup

What does this mean for our community?

In short, this new capital and the support of an incredibly talented group fuel our growth—and that’s a great thing! So, what’s next?

We’re focusing on two major areas: enhancing the Pickle experience and expanding our community. Diving deeper…

• Time-saving tools: We’re all about making renting and lending as easy and efficient as possible, and we’ll be rolling out features that do just that—from finding the perfect outfit to promoting your closet and boosting rentals.
• More on-demand access: We’ll be expanding same-day delivery beyond NYC, making it possible for more people across the country to receive items at their doorstep in as little as an hour.
• Pickle IRL: Get ready for Pickle’s first store where people can connect, shop, and merchandise their closets (more to come soon!). We’ll also be doing more events—if you attended Pickle’s First Birthday Party, there’s more where that came from! We’ll be hosting and sponsoring community gatherings each quarter so members can meet, compare closets, and discover amazing rentals. Since events are a major reason people rent, we’ll also be offering curated collections to make shopping for special occasions even easier (stay tuned for Halloween!).
• Pickle Partner Program: We are building this program to partner directly with our users who know their communities best. This will result in more eclectic closets to shop as well as unique and rare pieces to rent! Our partners will be the eyes and ears for the trends in the market and bring those directly to Pickle closets.
• Product Variety: Increasing the selection of Pickle items across inclusive sizes and styles is an essential initiative. Our partners in the Pickle Partner program (more below) will help increase the volume of new, trendy, and diverse pieces across all styles and sizes. They will also voice when a certain size or style is low in supply on Pickle.

All of this means more stylish closets to rent, more earning opportunities for lenders, and an experience that feels effortless, rewarding, and fun—exactly like sharing clothes with a friend (but dare we say, even better?).

It’s a big day for us! Thank you all for being such an important part of the Pickle community and this milestone, and joining us on this exciting journey. We’re excited for this next chapter of making Pickle a more valuable, enjoyable, and convenient solution. And a friendly reminder that we love feedback and ideas. Please don’t hesitate to send them our way through our Support Center!

Stay tuned for more updates and exciting new features coming your way!

‍Brian & Julia

‍Pickle’s Founders

P.S. If you’re interested in joining the Pickle team, please check out our job board here.

P.P.S. If you’d like to apply to the Pickle Partner program please

email community@shoponpickle.com :)