Last January 2025 saw the 7th edition of the Innovation Village Retail and Startup Competition, organised in collaboration with Retail Hub, in which young companies challenge each other to the sound of digital innovations by proposing new ways and technologies that can be applied in practice in the company and in the retail world. The winner of the last edition was Cloov, the start-up that is committed to transforming the fashion industry by making circular strategies accessible to brands through its innovative software. Here is an interview with Co Founder and Operations Director, Chiara Airoldi, to learn more about the startup and the software it proposes.
What is the goal of your start-up?
“To help brands meet the challenges of today’s changing fashion industry. Brands are struggling to contain unsold stock and manage shrinking profits. Customer behaviour itself is changing. They are moving towards more sustainable and convenient business models. At Cloove, we want to enable brands to seize this market opportunity by allowing them to integrate a circular offering into their e-commerce through our software”.
What is the potential of your system?
“Thanks to our software, brands can create and customise a wide range of circular offers such as rental, resale and repair. Not only that, we relieve our partners from an operational point of view because we manage payments, invoicing, CRM and much more. Finally, Cloov’s software is integrated with some specialised reverse logistics providers to provide reconditioning and repair services to our brands through end-to-end solutions”.
How has the start-up grown and developed?
“Since our incorporation in 2022, we have engaged six amazing brands and partners (including Oniverse Group, specifically the Atelier Emé brand, and Teddy Group, specifically the Rinascimento brand); rescued approximately 300,000 unsold inventories from landfills; and raised approximately $480,000 in capital. We are really proud of these achievements and this is only the beginning of our team’s growth.”
Which target consumers can most benefit from your solution?
“The main customers for our circular business model are Gen Z and Millennials. In fact, our data tells us that 75% of the users to whom we sell used cars, rent and offer repairs belong to these two generational categories. A very difficult target to acquire and especially to retain, but thanks to our solution, we provide our partners with the tools to do so in a scalable way”.
TO SEE THE VIDEO OF THE INTERVIEW FOLLOW THE LINK:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DE4rMDoKw36/
