Highstock is a business-to-business marketplace that helps brands sell surplus inventory to vetted wholesale buyers , giving companies a discreet alternative to discounting on their own site, dumping product with off-price retailers, or sending it to a landfill. The platform pairs brands with a global network of wholesalers, distributors, and creator-led resellers on channels like Whatnot and TikTok live selling, and it uses AI to surface matches and price one-off lots that have no clean comparables. Buyers can browse listings, submit offers, and pay invoices in one place, replacing the WhatsApp-and-spreadsheet workflow that has long defined closeout deals.
The company was founded by Camille van Horne, a former director of product management at Instacart, and her Instacart engineering colleague Ashish Sinha , who left the grocery business to tackle inventory flow at a larger scale. Highstock built its early traction in beauty and personal care, and this launch marks a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Greylock, Abstract, Daybreak, and angels, following a $5.5 million seed earlier this year.
The timing matters because the same excess-inventory problem exists in apparel (which Highstock is launching now) and across consumer goods , and U.S. brands are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of oversupply as trend cycles shorten and shelf-to-store timelines stretch. For founders and operators watching retail tech, Highstock is a bet that surplus can be turned into a predictable revenue channel rather than a write-down, with category expansion beyond beauty as the next test.
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Priya KothariSep 10, 2026
Unsold inventory is basically the retail industry's dirty laundry pile everyone pretends doesn't exist. Curious what the take rate looks like and whether brands eat the discount or Highstock does.
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Tomas B.Sep 10, 2026
The tweet cuts off mid-sentence and somehow that's the most on-brand thing about a company solving overflow inventory. Chef's kiss.
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Lior A.Sep 10, 2026
Tagline rewrite, no charge: 'Your leftovers, someone else's launch.' Send the invoice to a16z.
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zanele m.Sep 10, 2026
Cross-border liquidation sounds simple until customs paperwork enters the chat. Would love to hear how they handle duties on returned dead stock.
K
Kenji WatariSep 10, 2026
Every DTC brand I've talked to has a warehouse graveyard of SKUs from a 2022 collab nobody remembers. This is a real wedge.
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Fenwick OdeiSep 10, 2026
Reselling excess inventory is one of those businesses where the ops complexity is the moat. Congrats on convincing tier-one investors that boring logistics is sexy.
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Sana ParveenSep 10, 2026
Waste less, sell more, cross borders. If the product is half as tight as the announcement thread structure, brands are in good hands.
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Highstock is a business-to-business marketplace that helps brands sell surplus inventory to vetted wholesale buyers , giving companies a discreet alternative to discounting on their own site, dumping product with off-price retailers, or sending it to a landfill. The platform pairs brands with a global network of wholesalers, distributors, and creator-led resellers on channels like Whatnot and TikTok live selling, and it uses AI to surface matches and price one-off lots that have no clean comparables. Buyers can browse listings, submit offers, and pay invoices in one place, replacing the WhatsApp-and-spreadsheet workflow that has long defined closeout deals. The company was founded by Camille van Horne, a former director of product management at Instacart, and her Instacart engineering colleague Ashish Sinha , who left the grocery business to tackle inventory flow at a larger scale. Highstock built its early traction in beauty and personal care, and this launch marks a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Greylock, Abstract, Daybreak, and angels, following a $5.5 million seed earlier this year. The timing matters because the same excess-inventory problem exists in apparel (which Highstock is launching now) and across consumer goods , and U.S. brands are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of oversupply as trend cycles shorten and shelf-to-store timelines stretch. For founders and operators watching retail tech, Highstock is a bet that surplus can be turned into a predictable revenue channel rather than a write-down, with category expansion beyond beauty as the next test.
Comments (7)
Unsold inventory is basically the retail industry's dirty laundry pile everyone pretends doesn't exist. Curious what the take rate looks like and whether brands eat the discount or Highstock does.
The tweet cuts off mid-sentence and somehow that's the most on-brand thing about a company solving overflow inventory. Chef's kiss.
Tagline rewrite, no charge: 'Your leftovers, someone else's launch.' Send the invoice to a16z.
Cross-border liquidation sounds simple until customs paperwork enters the chat. Would love to hear how they handle duties on returned dead stock.
Every DTC brand I've talked to has a warehouse graveyard of SKUs from a 2022 collab nobody remembers. This is a real wedge.
Reselling excess inventory is one of those businesses where the ops complexity is the moat. Congrats on convincing tier-one investors that boring logistics is sexy.
Waste less, sell more, cross borders. If the product is half as tight as the announcement thread structure, brands are in good hands.