If you’ve ever missed a 30-day return window and watched a pristine, unworn sweater gather dust in your closet, you’re far from alone. The friction of the post-purchase experience has long been a dead end for consumers and a lost engagement opportunity for brands. Now, Seel, an AI operations platform for commerce, is rolling out a feature designed to automate that headache away, and it’s riding a massive wave of revenue growth to do it.
Today, Seel announced the launch of a new 1-click Resale capability within its Order Center. The premise is simple but ambitious: let shoppers instantly recover value from gently used items that are no longer eligible for a standard return or refund, entirely managed by AI agents.
The launch comes at a breakout moment for the startup. Its B2B metrics are staggering: Seel’s revenue run rate recently eclipsed $100 million in Q1 and is on track to hit $150 million by the end of the summer, representing nearly a 10x jump from the start of last year. The platform is now processing nearly 6 million transactions every month (double its volume from last year) and serves between 7,000 and 8,000 merchants, including TikTok Shop, Reebok, Rue La La, and Anker.
To fuel this aggressive scale, Seel has amassed $73.5 million in funding to date, positioning itself as a formidable player in the massive, yet notoriously fragmented, post-purchase operations space.
Turning a Dead End into a Marketplace
Historically, secondhand shopping has been championed for its affordability and environmental benefits, but it accounts for less than 3% of U.S. e-commerce transactions. The reason is friction. For the average consumer, creating listings across Depop, Poshmark, or eBay, monitoring fluctuating market prices, and negotiating with lowballing buyers simply isn’t worth the time.
Seel’s new feature effectively acts as a personal seller. When a shopper is past a brand’s return window, they can enter Seel’s Order Center, the same portal where they already track shipping or manage standard returns, and opt to resell the item with one click.
The user simply selects the item and sets a minimum acceptable price. From there, Seel’s AI agents take the wheel:
- Automated Listing: The AI pulls existing product data and automatically creates optimized listings across multiple secondhand marketplaces simultaneously.
- Dynamic Auctioning: The system monitors real-time market data to find the clearing price, updating prices dynamically and even messaging potential buyers where marketplace rules allow.
- Fulfillment: Once sold, the AI sends a shipping label and instructions to the original shopper, who just packs it up and ships it out.
- Inventory Management: The moment the item sells on one platform, the AI instantly pulls the listings from all other marketplaces to prevent double-selling.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to lose out just because a return window closes,” said Zack Peng, founder and CEO of Seel. “Resale gives shoppers more flexibility and a simple way to recover value from items they no longer need. It also extends the post-purchase experience for merchants in a way that builds trust, reduces friction, and strengthens the overall customer relationship.”
Why Retailers Care
For consumers, the appeal of algorithmic cash-recouping is obvious. But why are major retailers integrating it?
E-commerce returns represent an estimated $1 trillion global challenge. Managing returns, claims, and customer support typically requires a patchwork of disconnected software vendors. When a return window closes, the merchant typically loses that customer’s goodwill. By offering an integrated resale option, brands can turn a frustrating “no, you can’t return this” moment into a value-add service.
The feature is already live with several early adopters, most notably Debenhams Group, the global retail powerhouse generating over £1.5 billion in annual revenue.
“Resale gives our customers a better outcome when a return isn’t possible, adding flexibility to the post-purchase journey while creating a way to stay connected to shoppers even after the initial sale,” said Dan Finley, Group CEO of Debenhams Group. “It helps turn a potentially frustrating moment into a more positive post-purchase experience.”
The Agentic Era of E-commerce
Seel’s 1-click Resale is just the latest application of what the company calls its “agentic workforce”, a suite of AI tools trained on real outcomes from over 5,000 merchants. The platform’s core engine already manages complex workflows like instant refunds, global delivery updates, and real-time shopping assistance, currently serving over 50 million consumers across $6 billion of GMV annually.
As e-commerce continues to scale, human execution capacity has become the primary bottleneck for retailers. Seel is betting that the future of retail operations doesn’t lie in better dashboard software, but in autonomous AI agents capable of reasoning through edge cases and taking action within defined guardrails.
If Seel’s trajectory from a multi-million to a multi-hundred-million dollar run rate in just twelve months is any indicator, the retail industry is more than ready to let the agents take over.
