TutumluAnne

What did it do?

TutumluAnne ("Thrifty Mum") was a second-hand marketplace founded in October 2013 where parents could buy and sell lightly used children's items in a safe environment. Only products that passed a pre-screening were accepted, and a 15 per cent commission was taken on every sale. With TutumluDükkan, announced in 2020, it moved to an end-to-end service that collected items from users' homes, cleaned, photographed and sold them.

Why did it shut down?

According to founder Özden Pusat's announcement in October 2022, despite their belief in the TutumluDükkan model and positive feedback, market conditions and competition with big players made the business model hard to sustain. The announcement suggests that large marketplaces with wider product ranges and user bases were putting serious pressure on a vertical platform. TutumluDükkan's model of handling operations such as storage, cleaning, photography and shipping improved the user experience but also pushed up costs. It is reasonable to think that this heavy operational load, combined with competitive pressure, strained the company.

The story

Özden Pusat set out on her own in October 2013. The idea was to put children's items that parents use briefly and then set aside, such as pushchairs, toys and clothes, back into circulation from mother to mother. TutumluAnne aimed to change behaviour at a time when second-hand was rarely talked about in Turkey. Webrazzi and egirişim also count Barış Parıltı among the founders.

Unlike the big marketplaces that sold everything, the platform focused solely on children's products. Items were pre-screened, and users were shown average second-hand prices by brand and category to help them price correctly. According to a 2018 Webrazzi report, the start-up had passed 200,000 users and 900,000 visits a month, and took a 15 per cent commission on every sale. That same year Arya Women Investment Platform and Galata Business Angels invested at a $2 million valuation. In 2019 a second round, joined by EGİAD Angels, came at a $3.6 million valuation.

With the pandemic, the team tried a new model. With TutumluDükkan, announced in 2020, users simply requested a bag, filled it with items they no longer used and handed it to a courier. The company took on all the work: sorting, cleaning, photography, pricing, storage and shipping. The platform also expanded into women's clothing and shoes.

In October 2022 Pusat announced the decision to close the platform. TutumluAnne had reached 500,000 members and 1.3 million visits a month. Pusat explained that they believed in the TutumluDükkan model but had for some time been struggling to sustain the business model because of market conditions and competition with big players. Adding to basket and purchasing continued until 21 October, after which open transactions were completed and the site was closed.

TutumluAnne was one of the start-ups that championed sustainability and reuse early in Turkey. Its nine-year journey showed that even a strong community can struggle to compete with the scale of the big platforms.

Lessons for founders

• If you build a vertical marketplace, you have to keep proving value that general platforms cannot offer.
• Models that take on operations improve the experience but weigh down unit economics; do the maths early.
• A strong community brings loyalty, but on its own it does not offset the pricing power and reach of the big players.

Sources

1. TutumluAnne, the Turkish start-up founded by Özden Pusat in 2013, is closing (egirişim, 2022-10-19)
2. A second-hand marketplace focused on children's items: Tutumlu Anne (Webrazzi, 2018-06-13)
3. TutumluAnne raises a second round at a $3.6 million valuation (egirişim, 2019-04-02)
4. Mother and child products marketplace TutumluAnne launches its new business model, TutumluDükkan (egirişim, 2020-07-11)

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