10112090Birl: transforming resale in the fashion industry and beyondClosedInvestment AcceleratorInnovate UKBirl is revolutionising the fashion industry by spearheading the transition towards circular fashion through an easily adoptable, trusted "consumer-first" resale solution. It responds to enormous demand from brands and consumers within fashion and across secondary markets including electronics, sports, jewellery, and homeware. The Birl solution will provide brands with one-click resale functionality, allowing them to embrace circular fashion without changing their operations or having to 'touch' traded in garments. Uniquely, our solution is also customer-focussed, allowing a seamless customer experience with instant credits for traded-in clothes and free shipping. The project is motivated by urgent need for greater circularity within the fashion industry, which accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions with over 100bn garments manufactured annually with only 5% resold and <1% recycled into new garments. 75% end up in landfill, resulting in £400bn lost annually from recyclable clothing wastage. There is significant consumer interest in resale as a sustainable practice, with estimates suggesting 18% of wardrobes will comprise second-hand goods by 2030, up from 4% in 2021\. However, for this to be achieved, key challenges remain, including around scarcity, cost and fraud, with many brands facing barriers to resale (or being reluctant to offer high levels of credit) due to significant volumes of counterfeit products, e.g., high incidences of fake Nike, North Face, Canada Goose apparel. The problem is pervasive across secondary target markets, e.g., Fjällräven Kanken backpacks. Ray-Ban sunglasses, Apple AirPods, Tiffany jewellery. Brands and consumers additionally need trusted valuations of garments. This project will deliver cutting-edge image recognition to provide the verification of authenticity and condition of garments that brands (and buyers) need, and advanced machine learning to provide trusted valuations based on evaluations of seasonality, geography, and wider factors including resale market demand (supply-demand dynamics). Birl has a robust route-to-market within the fashion industry, and is developing routes within sport and additional secondary markets including jewellery, electronics and homeware.