News

Moxie Jean Bought By San Francisco-Based Clothing Marketplace Schoola

August 19, 2015 By Alida Miranda-Wolff

Featured on the Chicago Tribune

Moxie Jean, an online marketplace for maternity and children’s clothes, has been acquired by San Francisco-based resale company Schoola, the Arlington Heights-based company announced Monday.

Moxie Jean, founded in 2012 by Rosalie Sturtevant, Sharon Schneider and Sandra Pinter, will transition its site and inventory to merge with Schoola’s, according to a website announcement. It says it will no longer operate as a standalone service.

“Moxie Jean is joining forces with resale industry leader Schoola to create one united community that offers the same great deals on secondhand clothing — but extends the impact of your purchases,” Moxie Jean’s statement says.

The news was first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Like Moxie Jean, Schoola is marketplace for gently used women’s and children’s clothes. The company says it donates 40 percent of proceeds to more than 13,000 schools.

In a phone call with Blue Sky Innovation late Tuesday, Moxie Jean CEO Sharon Schneider said, quoting a proverb: “If you want to go fast go alone, and if you want to go far, go together.”

“I had looked at where we were and what I saw happening with resale, which has been a very popular category with a few players raising a whole lot of money and a lot of people raising less,” Schneider said. “I thought, you know, we’re going to need to go together.”

She wouldn’t disclose terms of the acquisition. In an April interview with the Chicago Tribune, Schneider said Moxie Jean was not yet profitable.

Last month, Bolingbrook-based competitor Swap.com announced that it had raised $5 million from a returning investor. Schneider said the Swap.com funding played no role in her decision to team up with Schoola.

She said Moxie Jean was interested in Schoola because of its mission of donating to schools.

“We were both mission-focused, and for me it was been bigger than just selling used clothes,” she said. “It’s been about the idea that if we can make resale mainstream, we can change the way that Americans consume new material, which has hugely problematic consequences for the rest of the world.”

Stacey Boyd, Schoola’s founder and CEO, said in an emailed statement that the acquisition “helps to strengthen our offering of high quality, gently used kids’ and women’s clothing to our customers, and extends our impact and mission.”

Moxie Jean had four full-time employees and 20 part-time employees before the acquisition. She said one or two are in talks with Schoola about taking roles there. Schneider will lead the transition at Schoola.

“One of our great strengths was that we built up a community that was really passionate and really loved the service and loved what we were doing,” she said. “When one company acquires another, it’s really easy for that goodwill to be squandered. The hope is to transition the community so that they still feel an affinity and an excitement about Schoola and to transfer that loyalty in a more profound way.”

Email: mgraham@tribpub.com • Twitter: @megancgraham