Eight startups, one maroon room in New York
Ragpiq was one of eight businesses selected from more than 1,300 applicants for eBay’s Circular Fashion Fund 2026. The global final ran at the eBay Fashion Forum in New York, presented with Vogue Business. Notes and photographs from the day.
Patrick White · Co-founder
The fund
The Circular Fashion Fund is eBay’s program for early-stage businesses building the infrastructure of circular fashion: resale, repair, recycling, sorting and the software behind them. It launched in 2022 and has backed more than 30 businesses since.
The 2026 edition drew more than 1,300 applications worldwide. Eight finalists were selected across the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, each receiving a US$80,000 grant, a month of workshops and mentoring, and a place at the global final in New York, where the winner takes a US$300,000 investment opportunity from eBay Ventures.
The room
The final was held on 28 May at The Ned NoMad on Broadway: the eight finalists, the judging panel and a room of fashion, resale and investment people under one marbled ceiling. Funnily enough, the walls are painted in Ragpiq maroon.
Keeping score: Alexis Hoopes, VP of Fashion at eBay; Federica Marchionni, CEO of Global Fashion Agenda; Laird Borrelli-Persson, senior archive editor at Vogue; and Joe Murphy, chief strategy and innovation officer at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The pitch
Each finalist had five minutes to present and five minutes of Q&A with the panel. Ragpiq pitched the consignment marketplace we are building for Australia: people hand over the clothes they never wear, trusted local resellers list and sell them across eBay and other marketplaces, and the software automates the intake, pricing, cross-listing and payouts in between.
The loud shirt is by P.A.M. (Perks and Mini), worn to put at least one of the Australian designer labels that fill our resellers’ racks on a New York stage.
The cohort
The eight, selected from more than 1,300 applicants worldwide:
- 01
TrosortGlobal winner
AI-assisted sorting lines that grade secondhand garments for reuse, resale or recycling in one pass.
- 02
A Melbourne marketplace keeping surplus and designer deadstock fabric in production.
- 03
Stockholm-built AI that learns fit and style so fewer online orders come back.
- 04
Peer-to-peer returns. The parcel goes straight to the next buyer, never back to a warehouse.
- 05
AI design-to-production tools for fashion brands.
- 06
An operating system for emerging fashion brands, from catalogue to manufacturing.
- 07
Pricing automation for secondhand fashion, handbags and sneakers.
- 08
RagpiqThat’s us
Consignment for Australia. Wardrobes become reseller inventory through one upload.
The winner
Trosort took the global prize. Their machines grade a secondhand garment for reuse, resale or recycling in a single pass, which is the least glamorous and most important problem in circular fashion. Co-founder Achille Mathot calls textile sorting “one of the fashion industry’s biggest infrastructure challenges”, and the judges clearly agreed.
The stage
Between pitches, Vogue Business US editor Madeleine Schulz talked AI and shopping with Phoebe Gates, co-founder of Phia, the assistant that compares prices across 40,000 retail and resale sites.
Also on the day: Sonia Mosseri, founder of New York denim label Still Here, and Christina Ripley, co-founder and director of brand and strategy at Christopher John Rogers, on building brands people hold on to.
Home
We flew home with the grant, seven new companies to follow and a longer to-do list. The rest of the Ragpiq story is on our About page.
Good clothes you never wear? That is exactly what we build for.