Cartlow, a UAE-based re-commerce solution where customers can order pre-owned, refurbished, open-box, and clearance products, has raised a $2 million Pre-Series A funding round. The funding came from Arzan VC, Vision Ventures, and others. Alongside this, Cartlow has launched its sister company – VASCART. 

Mohammed Sleiman launched Cartlow one year ago. The startup is focused on transforming and digitalizing the pre-owned industry and eliminating unsustainable practices. Their aim is to build a scalable technology and operations platform to deliver a reliable and consistently high-quality product to the end consumers.

The company works alongside a series of well-trusted global brands and recognized household names, helping to turn-over their inventory, and reduce unsustainable practices. By purchasing slow-moving and returned, pre-owned, or ‘open-box’ products at a low cost from partners who normally toss away items they are disrupting a generation of ‘e-waste’. This allows Cartlow to then resell the items to consumers after grading, testing, certifying, and restoring them to their original condition. The items are then sold at the best prices on Cartlow’s website and applications. Items range from TVs, laptops, white appliances to beauty, toys and fashion products, which are all safeguarded by warranty.

The startup launched their B2B business model ‘VASCART’. It will provide retailers, brands, and distributors with a value-added service and an after-service market. Vascart will tackle some key issues faced by many partners in the region. The services include: buyback solutions, liquidation services, warranty repair’s, extended warranty programme, refurbishing, quality control, and more. 

Typically, in the retail world, a product’s life cycle ends when the product is purchased. However, in reality, this is not the case since customer returns, end-of-life, and/or overstock products, which did not sell due to seasonality or underperformance, are inevitably discarded. This is where VASTCART’s concept will utilise the ‘reverse logistics’ mechanism.

Founder and CEO, Mohammed Sleiman said, “We are still in the early stages of learning how to bring new value to our customers by introducing re-commerce to the region. Our goal remains in continuing to solidify and extend our brand and customer base, since we first successfully launched Cartlow and now we have decided to create more opportunities by launching VASCART for retailers and distributors to benefit from, thereby enhancing their conversion rate and longtime value.

“We are determined to restructure the pre-owned, after-sales, and liquidation market in this region under the re-commence ecosystem and we will continue to do so by doing our best, to facilitate both consumers and retailers with endless solutions.”

The world of ‘re-commerce’ is currently an untapped, unstructured, and unmatured industry in the Middle East. With an estimated GCC market size of $10 billion across all categories. Cartlow has sold 1 million items within its first year of operation, which has helped to reduce a sizeable amount of e-waste.