Auction Marketplace Buywander Secures $21M in Funding

by · WWD
BuywanderCourtesy

A startup is proving that there’s value in finding creative solutions for returned and overstock inventory.

Buywander, an auction-based marketplace for returned and overstocked retail inventory, has just secured $21 million in fresh funding. Madrona Venture Group and Inspired Capital led the Series A funding round. This brings the Seattle-based startup’s total funding to $28 million. Buywander said it will use the funding to accelerate national expansion, invest in technology, and grow its leadership team.

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Jordan Allen and Brock Kowalchuk launched Buywander in 2023. The company’s auction platform connects buyers with returned and overstocked goods from vetted retailers, including Amazon, Target and Walmart. Every item starts bidding at $1 in a timed online auction. The highest bidder picks up the items from one Buywander’s eight warehouses across the United States. The company has warehouses in Spokane, Kent, Portland, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Denver, Chicago and Minneapolis.

On any given day, Buywander says it has up to 40,000 items in auction across its locations. The company said 70 percent of its inventory are returned items while the remaining 30 percent are overstocks.

“Scaling this model market by market takes real infrastructure from warehouse operations, to reverse logistics and retailer relationships,” said Brock Kowalchuk, Buywander co-founder. “This round lets us build that foundation ahead of demand, so every new market opens with the same reliability customers already expect from us in our existing markets.”

The recent funding round speaks volumes to the untapped value of returned and overstocked items in the U.S. But whereas Buywander sees the potential of this market, the rest of the retail industry only sees it for its costs: nearly $850 billion in returns alone last year, or 15.8 percent of annual sales, according to a 2025 report from the National Retail Federation.

“Buywander is solving a problem that’s only getting bigger. Retailers are drowning in returned and overstocked inventory, and there’s never been a good local solution for moving it,” said Alexa von Tobel, founder and managing partner at Inspired Capital.

“What stood out to us is how much traction the model has already found in every market it’s entered,” he added. “Jordan and Brock have built something that works for buyers, works for retailers, and scales city by city without losing the local warehouse experience that makes the model work.”

Jordan Allen, co-founder and CEO of Buywander, said retailers have been sitting on billions of dollars in returned and overstocked inventory every year when there is an entire market that is eager to have access to it. “We’ve seen that appetite play out in every market we’ve entered,” he said. “This funding lets us bring that experience to more cities, faster, and put Buywander in front of the next wave of buyers who are done with the old returns model.”

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