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Former Apple engineer Alex Ruber and former Twitter and Asana engineer Parth Chopra first met on the Y Combinator founder’s matching platform, then met in person at a thrift store to shop. They later went on a shopping trip at a thrift store where they talked about solving problems by finding the right product in the online space.
Many consumers struggle to find the right item without spending hours on Instagram. To address this problem, the duo is building a search engine Appearancewhich allows users to search For used goods from various sources. The startup is currently part of Y Combinator’s first fall batch.
“The entire used shopping market is really fragmented. There are hundreds of resources available, like Depop, Mercari, ThredUp, eBay, Craigslist, and more. It’s difficult for consumers to sift through all of them to try to get to the product you’re looking for. So we wanted to remove this,” Roper said in a call with TechCrunch. Friction for users.
Both Roper and Chopra are immigrants, he said, and were accustomed to spending time and money in thrift stores.
But saving is not easy. When Roper tried to find a particular jacket from a TV show (Carmi’s patchwork jacket from the movie “The Bear”), he started thinking about building a product that would help him do just that. He also wanted to look for a co-founder who works in the circular economy. He noted that Chopra was a good fit because he was interested in fashion and thrift.
“For me, there was also a personal interest because my mother would take me to flea markets every Sunday. I bought a lot of things from those places, including pianos, when I started learning the instrument. The basic idea behind Both flea markets and Encore are about finding a hidden gem.
Encore AI-powered search
On Encore, you can type your query and get matches from multiple resources, including Poshmark, The RealReal, Grailed, Etsy, and eBay. Since Encore uses large language modeling technology, you can write a query like “Show me the dress that Emily wore in Episode 4 of Season 3 of Emily in Paris.”
The search engine also displays partial claims such as “Outfit inspo for” and “Shop from the Show.” When you click on it, you can complete the prompt with auto-populated suggestions or your own words. This is mainly to show users the different types of search terms they can use and avoid a blank page when users do not yet understand the capabilities of the search engine.
Roper noted that sentence length can vary, sometimes dramatically. Some people enter a simple sentence like “Show me the jeans” while others type a detailed description like “I’m a 6’2” person who shaves and is looking for ski pants under $100 without big logos on them.
The used retail market is witnessing an upward growth curve, with analysts expecting it to reach $73 billion in the United States and $350 billion globally by 2028. Report from online thrift store ThredUp He points out that online resale of used goods will make up half of the used goods market in 2025.
Encore processes over 50,000 searches per month and sees a 26% monthly growth in searches and a 15% growth in clicks.
The startup currently relies on affiliate equity to generate revenue. However, the company is also trialling a $3-per-month subscription, which offers unlimited searches using advanced forms, finding items by uploading images, and offering support via email and chat.
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