Max Retail Raises $15 Million to Expand Excess Inventory Marketplace

Max Retail has raised $15 million in a Series A round to expand its marketplace that helps independent retailers and brands sell excess inventory.

The new funding will fuel the company’s efforts to double its number of sellers and expand its support of global sales channels that need drop ship inventory, the company said in a Wednesday (May 22) press release.

“With this investment, we will continue to grow our sales channel network and expand this excess inventory solution to support the full product lifecycle, giving independent retailers and brands the tools they need to increase their inventory turns and maximize cash recuperation on unsold goods,” Melodie van der Baan, CEOand co-founder of Max Retail, said in the release.

The company’s marketplace helps small retailers in the United States deal with excess stock that represents, on average, between $50,000 and $200,000 in financial losses each year if left unsold, according to the release.

The Max Retail platform increases the potential buyer pool for this excess stock “exponentially” and results in payouts between four times and eight times higher than the standard amount gained in liquidation, the release said.

With the new funding, the company aims to add an AI-powered pricing and allocating engine to help sellers maximize the value of their excess inventory and SKU-level insights to help them understand the inventory performance and market value of every item listed on the platform, per the release.

“Max Retail has built a highly automated product and does not manage inventory or logistics, allowing them to grow efficiently and expand into new geographies and categories,” Ian Loizeaux, founding partner at Nosara Capital, which led the funding round, said in the release. “We’re excited to back Melodie and the Max Retail team, who bring a wealth of first-hand industry experience to solving these challenges.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that among middle-market firms, those struggling mainly with excess inventory costs reported a 4.8% loss of annual revenue, a $17 million hit.

That is one of the factors that shape uncertainty and its residual costs, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence publication, “The 2024 Certainty Project Report.”

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