LOOPED IN with Carl Warkentin

The K-Resale Playbook: Brand-Led Re-Commerce in Korea with Seah Joo from Relay

• Carl Warkentin • Season 1 • Episode 15

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What if secondhand felt as polished as buying new—and actually grew brand loyalty? We sit down with Relay, the Korean recommerce engine powering white‑label resale for major fashion groups and department stores, to unpack how trust, speed, and cleaning every item can flip circularity into a profit center. From doorstep pick‑ups and instant store credit to meticulous QC and photography, Relay’s model keeps resale inside the brand ecosystem and turns trade‑ins into repeat purchases.

We get into the mechanics: why department stores like Lotte and Hyundai became pivotal partners, how a white‑label experience preserves brand equity, and the operational backbone that makes it all work. You’ll hear how care labels and distributor tags streamline authentication in Korea, why in‑store pop‑ups unlock hidden supply, and how dynamic pricing helps sellers feel valued while buyers feel lucky. With one of the world’s fastest e‑commerce markets and a consumer base that prizes precision and service, Korea is stress‑testing recommerce—and the results are compelling, with rapid sell‑through and growing mainstream acceptance.

There’s a bigger thesis here: social impact scales when it follows a great business model. Relay shares a candid view on aligning incentives, building credibility through hands‑on logistics, and using data and selective AI to remove friction without overpromising tech. We also look ahead to a curated hub that aggregates high‑quality secondhand across partners, creating network effects for brands big and small. If you care about circular economy, resale operations, and how to make sustainability pay, this conversation is a playbook for turning intention into action.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review—what’s the one change that would make you trade in more often?

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Carl:

Welcome to LOOPED IN, the number one podcast about the circular economy and regenerative business models. We bring behind the scenes conversations with investors, founders, and corporate leaders into the spotlight, exploring how to scale impact, build profitable business models, and redesign our economy for a better future. So let's get started with today's guest. Welcome everybody to another episode of Looped In. The whole industry is talking for a while about resale and re-commerce and all the chances in that space. And I have had um already sessions here in the podcast about this. And recently I met a wonderful person from Korea and uh would love to talk today about re-commerce in Korea. Sea, welcome to the show.

Seah:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Carl. I'm so excited.

Carl:

It is exciting, and I'm super grateful for the conversation that we had already, and that you also mentioned that you're a fan of the show and that you listened to a couple of the episodes, especially the one with my friend from Archive, uh Alex. And in our conversations, um, what interested me the most is to get an idea of how resale is you know being executed in Korea and a part of the world that we don't hear all the time about. There's a lot of media and interest from the US market and from Europe, but obviously Asia is super important, if not one of the most important markets. So I'm super excited to talk a little bit about that with you today. For everybody who's not familiar with Relay, tell us a little bit about it.

Seah:

Okay, Relay is a provider of branded resale. And what we do is helping fashion companies step into the growing resale demand without the heavy lifting of building their own resale operations. So we basically focus on converting resale demand into brand demand, meaning when a customer sells an item for cash, it's outside of their control. But for brand credit, it drives like their own sales. So instead of resale being outside of their ecosystem, like something on peer-to-peer market, uh, we make it a part of their own cycle. Yeah, we are we start with a solution provider, and now we are entering a new trajectory after partnering with some retailers to a resale hub where we also covers a lot of assortment of highly qualified second-hand products.

Carl:

How do I, as a customer, as a consumer, experience relay? Do I ever experience relay as a brand um resale or re-commerce player, or is it more like a you know, resale as a service solution for brands?

Seah:

Yeah, the letter is correct. So we are basically a white level solution provider on the front, and customer cannot find us. It's like you can just find our name, like bottom of the front page, like powered by relay, but basically consumers deem it as the brand's own like service, and that's what we are aiming for, because they have more like um basically presence in the market and more influence. So for a customer's point of view, um it's really easy to use the program because they have already the trust of that brand. So if I just introduce the process, you can visit the website that you made, but you it feels like the brand's own website or the department store's service. So you can start by in department stores, for example, you can select brand, because in department store there are like hundreds of brands, so you have to choose brand first of your item, and then you choose category of your item. It's categorized as tops and bottoms or outwear, and then select a subcategory of that item, and lastly the year of manufacturer. Then you can estimate, you can see the estimated reward point. So then you can decide whether you will like send it and submit a request or not. So if you submit a request, then you can just place that item in a box and leave it outside your door. And that's it for your end, and then our career picks it up on the next day. And the item will arrive at our fulfillment center, and then our team will inspect it to make sure it matches the details you submitted. And everything checks out. We finalize the buyback and immediately issue the department store credit so that you can use it in department store for any item. And afterwards, what we do in our logistics is first going through the full cleaning cycle. It's handled by our professional laundry partners. And after cleaning, we conduct a second round of inspection to make sure it meets our quality standards. It might include something as tightening the loose buttons or if there's any sending items back for special cleaning. And afterwards, we digitalize that item and upload it to the store. And in branded resale case, we already have that product information and photo. But the retailer's resale, like department stores case, since we don't have the data, we have to handle the full process, including photography, size measurement, and like product information entry. So we've been handled that uh as of now, we outsource this part, but we will soon internalize that whole part as our core competency.

Carl:

Where do you sell the product? Is it also the brand, your brand partner? Do they have a secondhand platform as well, or do you sell that on an entirely different platform?

Seah:

For department store, we sell it entirely different platform. And for brand, it's just the same as how Troven Archive does. Like we sell it on the same marketplace where they can sell it. So for branded resale, they have like two functions basically. Like customers can buy and sell. But for department store, customers only can sell their items and not they cannot buy on the same site. And actually, it was, you know, department store is still an icon of luxury here. So there were a little bit of internal worry about if secondhand is fit for like department store's image as of now. I think it will soon blur. Um we had no choice but to separate it to make it like accelerate. So we have our own resale, like selling part, resale site. And now we are entering like whole another trajectory by getting some like partnership approach from like other players like e-commerce or big um I'll say portals who covers also the e-commerce side. So we are considering our own merchandising mix.

Carl:

It's a very holistic approach that you guys are having. And I'm actually very impressed that you are cleaning your products as well. Like, do you clean all the products?

Seah:

Yeah, basically, we have to clean all the product to make sure it's up to par. Because I think I have to explain the background of it. It's related to like Korean consumer DNA. So I'll say Korean consumers are are like deeply demanding and impatient in a good way. So they expect like speed, precision, and quality like all at once. So they just don't buy product, but they just uh they also expect to be cared. So like experience is a huge part. So that shaped how business operates here. And also I think that's actually the force behind what has made K-beauty and K-pop such a phenomenon. So there's this like national obsession with doing things better, like faster and with detail.

Carl:

I like that.

Seah:

I'm glad you like it. Yeah, Korea isn't just following global trends, but it's close to like stress testing them. So what works here usually scales elsewhere. So in our like Let's hope you're right. Yeah, but it's hard to be Korean. So that means like you can't just make resale available, but we have to make it like beautiful, like instant, and trustworthy. So that's why at Relay we build our model around in-house fulfillment and logistics. So we don't outsource this parts of the process, but we do them ourselves end-to-end. So for us, it's not an efficiency issue, but it's more a credibility strategy. Because I think in branded resale, especially, trust is the main currency. Because customers choose branded resale over peer-to-peer platforms because they trust the brand. So our job is to uphold the brand level trust in every step of the process. So over time, like since we handle like hundreds of items like each day, over time this knowledge compounds into the expertise that allows us to represent each partner brand like almost as if we were part of their own organization. So yeah, this approach might be very manual. It is actually manual and operationally intensive, but it's also what gives us an edge in the market, like Korea, especially. Since Korea is um in here, like agility and precision really defines competitiveness to meet consumer demand. So yeah, so our attention to detail is I think what it really scales trust and it's our strategic approach to turn that like Korean service obsessive DNA into our like competitive advantage to make resilience really better choice for customers.

Carl:

And you do already have quite some significant customers, right?

Seah:

Yes, so we start with colon FNC. Again, to give you a little background here, because nobody knows colon FNC like worldwide. So basically, Korean market is led by several conglomerates. So um, yeah, it's dominated by major like players of five or six if you count. So, for example, there's like LG Fashion, Samsung and Hyundai. They all like affiliated with like major corporations like Samsung and LG or Hyundai. The same in the retail, like only three department stores named Hyundai, Lot Day, and Shinsege, they basically control the whole market. So when these players move, they reshape the entire landscapes. So that's why it's very meaningful that Lotte and Hyundai Department stores recently launched their resale programs with us at Relay. Actually, it immediately gave resale a kind of legitimacy and visibility that no marketing campaign could buy. Oh, and at the same time, like now online players like Mujinsa have been a huge force in fashion e-commerce. And they recently launched their own dedicated resale marketplace as well. So resale now is becoming part of the mainstream retail infrastructure. And so our partnership with like big companies actually give the enough like a fair amount of attention to the whole market. And we've worked with one of those big companies named Colon FNC. They basically started as a garment producing, and one of their parties garment producing, so it really makes sense for them to make it more circular. So that's how we first met them. And now we have two department stores, like I said. And also, we recently launched a dedicated branded resale site for LG Fashion. And next month, actually just two weeks later, we will launch another, but I cannot disclose the name, but it's still among the top five. So, yeah, now you can see like these dominant players are jumping in this place, and the media and the market are really their attentions get really intensified, and the second hand and new, the line between the secondhand and new are getting blurred really fast.

Carl:

I also read that the secondhand fashion market is growing in in Korea around 30% annually, which is pretty significant, even more than in most other uh countries. What do you think is the driving source for that growth? Is it a cultural shift? Is there a certain sustainability awareness in Korea or where is it coming from?

Seah:

I think certainly awareness of sustainability is sadly not, I'll say. But like I say, I think the greatest factor is Korea's economy is really majority-driven. Trends move very quickly here, and once something becomes mainstream, the whole market follows. The structure itself has a really high scalability. So on one side that can be challenging because there's not much of a sustainability tailwind here, not much like regulations, legislation has been made or even discussed. But on the other side, it means once people accept the retail as a new norm, it spreads fast and really deep. So as a startup, we try to uh bring something irresistible to break that conservatism. Like something so clearly beneficial and easy that even the most traditional and conventional corporations can't ignore it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If I can add one more thing, I think another factor might be the fact that we have uh maybe one of the most advanced e-commerce markets in the world. About 60% of current consumers shop second-hand online, which is actually the highest rate globally. And the number goes up, even goes up when you see the Gen Y and Gin Gers. They prefer online fashion shopping to in-store purchases. So actually, to give you a sense, it's like even our population is only half of Japan's, our e-commerce market size is almost the same as theirs. So that tells how concentrated and active the e-commerce here. And again, e-commerce is very highly scalable, scalable. So I think that also explains why um the second-end move is really fast here.

Carl:

Tell us a little bit more about Rulet in terms of company. How old is the company? And like is it still in a startup stage or well more mature? And um, or like which funding stage are you in?

Seah:

Okay, so our company has built 2019. So it's been a while, but uh we started this branded resale business like four years ago, meaning that before we pivoted to this model, um, before we covered another, but it was always in the territory of like fashion and like IT. It is because of our founder's background. And as of now, we are 20 people in our funding stage is pre-A. We closed the funding like May, this May. So it was pretty recent. And yeah, we have one office in Seoul and then fulfillment warehouse near the Seoul. So we have like two major like hubs.

Carl:

Well, it sounds pretty amazing what you're talking about in Korea and the e-commerce market and the implications for the re-commerce market? Now, how aware are you for competitors from abroad, like from the US? You mentioned before Trove, Archive, and others. How much do you think will they also enter your market if they are maybe not already in it? And vice versa, how how much should all other players be aware that maybe you will expand way beyond Korea and Asia?

Seah:

I think refill, you cannot rule out the the role of fulfillment and logistic part. It should be localized. So I think there is a possibility that Troven Archive can partner with like global brands, of course, or it can be work as another partnership, like resale players like us. So I think it's in complementary, like it's not only competing, but I think we can bridge those software players' software and our market scalability and like in-house logistics that can cater to local customers and local brands. So yeah, I think basically what scales this movement is uh it's really hard to make, but it's the awareness and consensus that that this is not only sustainability like ideal, but it is a business case. Because in here, that's really important part. So once Korean market like notice the importance and how it really makes sense in business, the adoption will follow fast. So I think there is a chance that, especially for like global brands, since as far as I know, they try to keep the brand consistency. Chances are those brands who already have their own resale program in the headquarters might want to roll out their strategy to Asian market. So in that case, I think um it can be the expansion. Expansion can occur like that way, or they want to find some like more localized partners. I think we have another high chance to be one of them. Yeah, so I'm really open to that. Yeah.

Carl:

We talked a little bit about the reasons why brands and your customers are entering the market, and obviously economic opportunities are the main driver, and I think that's everywhere the same. You mentioned your logistics and the focus that you as a company put on the whole, you know, owning the whole logistics part. You mentioned also that you wash your clothes. I've almost never seen that anywhere else, simply because of cost point of view. I did have a big project in the re-commerce market, and I think I also talked with Alex from Archive about this, with Gore-Tax and some local German retailers for re-commerce and a company that was acquired. It's a German startup in the resale market that was acquired by Trove in the end, where we built also a big project uh with a non-profit initiative that I built called Circular Republic. And we found out there were a lot of challenges next to these opportunities and reasons why it's still not always so scalable and profitable to go into the re commerce market. Obviously, we're all trying to change that. I would love to learn a bit from you as a player in Korea, doing things a little bit different. How what are your main challenges and how do you face them?

Seah:

Yeah, for sure. For us, one of the biggest challenges is that decision makers in big companies often have very outdated perceptions of second-hand goods. Actually, still behind how general consumers already think. So our job is to close the gap by proving that resale delivers customer satisfaction and commercial value at the same time. So we think um the proof often starts really small. Like we cannot change the whole plot in one day. So it's like something like a pilot or a campaign or a trading program. So the tangible wins that we can show them to open the doors for deeper integration. It happens with all partners. Um the first partner that we uh start this business, Colon FNC, it takes two and a half years that we extend uh resale for their 20 brands underneath. So we started with one brand and after six months we extend to six brands, and it took two and a half years to finally expand, extend it to like all brands. It usually it takes time and also in department stores case, like I briefly introduced, retailers the case becomes more tricky, but it's critical because um I mean the stakeholder alignment it gets even complicated because even within a single corporation, I think you already know there are often so many siders between departments and a slight friction between what is the priority. In a department store context, it's even more complex since current department stores are all based on a concession model, meaning you have the retail headquarters and individual brands and the store managers. They need to be all involved. They actually initially assumed that financial incentives would align interest easily, but we soon realized it was more complicated than that. So stores have the in-store brands, they are interdependent to each other. So both sides hesitate to take like bold actions that might make others perceive seem like risky or unconventional. So we are still navigating that dynamic. And so, yeah, actually, in that context, we are launching a pop-up trading event actually next week, next Friday, at the department stores. So we see it as a first step to physically embed the resale concept in retail space to let more people see it and feel it and experience it rather than just experience it through online. Because I believe some things only can be understood through real life experience outside the e-commerce realm. So we always try to um make a phrase-by-phrase strategy. So yeah, like I said, the department store like concerned like secondhand is not fit for their image and maybe erode their image around the luxury retailers. So to overcome that resistance, we did just that's why we decided to start by handling only the buying process and keep the selling separate for now.

Carl:

Let's go maybe a bit into the like there are a couple of challenges that I faced when I really looked into the market. And a couple of them, just to name a couple of them, but one was awareness for customers to sell their products. So, you know, how do we unlock the supply of the resellable goods? Because a lot of times, at least in Europe and with Gore-Tex, we realized where are all the Gore-Tex jackets? They don't seem to be on landfill, they don't seem to be thrown away. We do see them here and there on eBay or peer-to-peer platforms, but by far not as much as they're being sold. So most likely they end up, everybody just puts them in their cellar rather than selling them or throwing them away. So a big question was how do we unlock that supply? How do we make people aware to sell their products? That was one thing. Another thing is obviously on the customer side, who is the customer versus who is the seller? On the customer side, how do we convince more people to buy and purchase second hand? I think there you have a great concept with this Korean mindset of you know, you wash your things, everything has to be perfect, and the experience is super important so that people don't only save money, but they also feel good about the entire experience. It's a premium experience for a way better price. And so those are two. I think one of the biggest challenges was product identification. And you mentioned it before when you work with retail stores compared to brands, you do not have the information about the product, a digital product passport would help, or something you could scan. A lot of software in that area is being designed, so there will be solutions, I guess, with image recognition and so on. But product identification, and you even mentioned it yourself, it's then a manual process next to the washing, next to the photographing, product description. You have to do that all manually. And that's also in Korea very labor-intensive and very expensive. So, do you face these challenges as well? Do you face other challenges where you realize that we still need to improve or we need solutions?

Seah:

Yeah, there's so much point to touch. So I'll start with the first question of how to secure the supply. So yeah, I think now we all know that like supply is a key in retail because it's where everything starts. So for us, it was the same. Securing a desirable brand partner was the most important part. So actually, that's why we hold hands with department stores. Because in scalability-wise, it took much longer than we expected to onboard our second major fashion group. It took like three years. Even though the model made sense, made perfect sense to us and for other like candidate partner fashion groups, the long chain of decision making and natural conservatism inside those large corporations made it really hard to control the pace. So we realized we need to have a different approach that one that didn't completely rely on the brand partnership. And also we found that the opportunity we discovered through the brick and mortar store. Like since we launched an in-store trading pilot with 12 colons across the country, and it turned out to be very successful because you know, like a little older customers are not still really familiar with this old digitalized service yet. And stores have, they still remain as a primary merchandising channel for like major brand labels. So we found that like a huge portion of sales was coming from like brick and mortar store and especially department store in Korea's context. So, for those reasons, we concluded if you want resale to go. Mainstream, curing the right supply, department stores are a must because they can bring both greater recognition and broader customer base. And like intuitively for me, it felt like we are really changing the way people shop. Because even though it's still one-sided service as of now, it actually makes the department store less about the shopping side and more about like creating lifestyle-driven, rewarding experience. And actually that clicked the department stores too, because they are no longer trying to be just like a collection of different shops. They're trying to create a culture and which is now at the core of their like future strategy because they're facing increasing demand in the e-commerce side as well. So yeah. So for us, for supply side, uh the partnership with retailer was one of the solutions so far we try to make, and also to make it more presents with like physical presents. So yeah, so one thing is department stores like marketing power, and the second must be the physical presence. It's what we are trying to like make a little deeper connection with. And the second part, or I forgot the second part, but you mentioned, surely mentioned the authentication part, right?

Carl:

Yeah.

Seah:

So yeah.

Carl:

That was the third part, yeah, right.

Seah:

Yeah. So authentication part for domestic brand, so basically the first thing we look at when we get a garment from customers is care label inside the garment. Because the key information there is the product code. And like every brand has its own different coding system, but usually they include the core information such as production year, decision, product type, color, and more. We've accumulated a large data set of this. So once we decode the alphanumeric sequence of the product code, we can identify all necessary details and conform authenticity. And the reason it can work is for domestic brands like the partner brands of ours. Counterfeit products are extremely rare so far. And even when they appear, the maker of those fakes don't really bother to replicate the care levels because it's not worth their cost. It doesn't turn out really high ROI for them. And in terms of imported like beloved global brands, usually they have, like, not usually, like almost all of those global brands that are distributed in Korea, they have official distributor. So we only get the product with the Korean care level attached by the official distributor, meaning we don't get a product of global brand that doesn't have that like official distributors, additional imported additional that care level because that serves as a guarantee of authenticity.

Carl:

Do you also consider AI solutions for product product identification? And are you like developing something on your own? Or also considering acquiring or partnering with solutions? I'm thinking of one company in Sweden called Bencha, and they are having, I think, the largest data set of re-commerce data worldwide, with I think it was half a million data sets every single day, which allows them, you know, obviously to obtain data, pricing information, like what should be the right price for a product, which is also one of the biggest struggles that I came across when it comes to re-commerce and scaling re-commerce, making the seller feel he gets the right amount of money, a fair amount of money for his product, but also the buyer getting a feeling he he makes a bargain compared to the new product. So the right pricing. Is that something you consider?

Seah:

Yeah, that sounds super like authentication for us. The basic like rule they use is pretty simple, like you heard. It's only pretty dependent on the care level. And actually, that's the barrier that we cannot expand the category of luxury. Because like regarding authentication, we just found even with the most like high-end technology, there's no 100% guarantee, right? Because if the technology is perfect, there's no guarantee that the physical item is matched with that product passport or like anything. It's not that developed yet. So we are open to that like AI usage, of course. We are making some image through AI to make a better, like elevated fashion of field product image and pricing. But for authentic authentication, um we think there is the limit. But other than authentication, yeah, we are totally open to using AI and we are seeing a chance there. And actually, we are also developing a dynamic pricing model with our engineering team, and it's a top priority for us as well, because pricing is an important part. And yeah, I'm really interested in Ben Shai because we found that pricing is really important, but we cannot track the like every single SKU popularity and their price in both primary and resale markets. So it's a must, I think.

Carl:

I guess most listeners are also very curious about the specialties of the Korean market or the Asian market. Do you feel they're like the customer needs or the drivers for customers to go into re commerce, uh the the brands that you're working with, do you feel there's a difference towards other Asian countries or or Europe and the US?

Seah:

I found Asian market is pretty varied. Actually, there is like East Asian countries and also Southeast Asian countries, so it's pretty fragmented. So I don't have any like expertise in other Asian markets, but when I directly maybe um compare Korean consumers and European consumers, it's not like hundred like I don't have like hundred expertise on that, but I just found that in European market it becomes it already become became a norm to buy something secondhand. It was really fascinating to see that vintage become a top retailer in France, yeah. Which for us that's a really desirable future for us, but at the same time shocking for me. So I think it's a little behind in sustainability sense. But what we've consistently seen is if an item is clean and well managed and clearly authenticated, customers still find it towards the price. Because it's not just about like value for money, and that's actually what we're trying to. It's also the satisfaction of getting something that feels like a new primary shopping experience. Regarding like other secondhand, I think it's human nature that like when you buy something expensive, your expectations rise accordingly, but when you buy something for less than expected, and turns out it it it exceeds your expectations, the satisfaction doubles.

Carl:

That's a goal.

Seah:

Yeah, right. You feel lucky. So, yeah, actually, that's the goal. So I think the major motivation in Korean consumers are pretty centered around that feel that luckiness. And yeah, that's what we see all the time in our resale market. You see so many happy customers because they feel they are getting more value than they paid for. And actually, it means the foundation of retention, like happy customers come back. Yeah, so yeah, we are really trying to make this resale scene better than now, giving it an upgraded, more fashionable appeal. And yeah, that's how we are trying to shift the perception and proving that the demand side um is already validated. And actually, to share our sales performance of resale market, um it shows very strong sell-through rate, like 92% within one year, and about 60% within one month, which is pretty strong. So I think that means like most items find new owners very quickly, and it demonstrates uh both the operational efficiency and the growing demand for this branded resale.

Carl:

Right. When you look a bit, you know, in the in the next couple of years, what uh what are the main goals strategically or from growth point of view? What you know, where is relay growing towards and what are you most excited about?

Seah:

Yeah, uh after gaining a lot of media attention, after we uh launched resale program with department stores, we started receiving partnership inquiries from major players, including like vertical fashion e-commerce platforms, or portal companies that provide like P2P marketplace environment and e-commerce infrastructure. So for our side, we see this phase as a point where we need to diversify our sales channel and build our own merchandising mix to leverage broader exposure and maintaining the curated quality and consistency of our resale supply. And I'm not really sure it can be worked in the near future, but what we are also considering is building a hub site where um consumers can choose where to sell their items and also shop all like high-quality second-end goods in one place. So that would serve as a centralized platform that like connects our uh brand and retailer partners while give customers a seamless like resale experience. So basically, like broader audience and broader optionality. So this would uh also motivate, I think, smaller brands to join. Because um you know, being featured alongside like corporation means their like credibility goes up. So it provides them more exposure and potential for cross-selling opportunities within the same ecosystem. So yeah, we are aiming for that.

Carl:

My closing question to you would be something that kind of started also our entire, you know, like relationship and our first conversations that we had where you you know, you also listened to this podcast and um were curious about learning more from players from a different part of the world. What is your wish as a takeaway from everybody outside of Korea, you know, who listen right now? What do you want them to go away with?

Seah:

Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway that we can give is actually we are really focusing on the business side. And the reason is really simple. It's not because you're not care about sustainability, but every entity, whether a company or a consumer, we found that ultimately they are acting through a business lens. That's the majority, right? So, you know, we all know the gap between what people say and what they can, what they actually do. So consumers often rank sustainability as a top value, but when they make an actual purchase, it really appears in their like top three or even five considerations. So we believe that to make an impact, we have to focus on what really moves the needle the most, what drives action and not just intention. So yeah, we've been really trying to turn change into actionable behavior, like both for brands, retailers, and for customers. We build like structures that make sustainable choice the easiest and the most beneficial one, like beneficially of appealing to them instead of asking brands to reinvent your business or yeah, just preach them. So we help them like integrate circularity in ways that drive sales, like deepen customer relationships, and make sense like operationally and in business. I think in circularity space, I really admire like everyone in this like circularity realm because I just I'll say call myself as realistic idealist.

Carl:

That's beautiful.

Seah:

Yeah. You know, I major in business, so I'm really used to the terms like profitability and like turnover and so on, but I always but at the same time, I had the constant like thirst for meaning beyond numbers, for something that truly adds value to the world and changes the status queue bias. Yeah, during the whole journey, what I realized was really simple. Like I have to, and the businesses have to reconcile what they want to bring to the world, especially in circularity territory, and what the world asks them to bring. So yeah, that's why I joined this company. Uh, when I met the founder and CEO of a company, his philosophy like immediately clicked me because he believed that social impact should be the result of a good business, the profitable business, not the other way around.

Carl:

Beautifully said, right. Yeah. Amen. Amen to that. Thank you so much, Seab, for letting us in in a bit of the the world in in Korea and and how you guys specifically target and and approach re-commerce in a really nice way. One might one might say uh relay is uh the k-pop for re commerce. So really cool. And I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope that a lot of people took took some things out of this podcast. I have, and I hope it brings also innovative markets like Korea on the map and and more on the map, but more into podcasts because I think it's really important to learn from different angles and approaches and cultures.

Seah:

Yeah, thank you so much, Carl. It's been so great to share what we've been working on, and yeah, I'm so grateful that you can share another perspective.

Carl:

Thank you.

Seah:

You too.