GELF LA 2023’s Global Innovation Showcase: A Look at Emerging Business Models – Recommerce and NFTs featured two CEOs breaking new ground with innovative business models. ethos NFT is a white label NFT platform on a mission to accelerate the world’s mass adoption of digital assets and NFTs. CEO Matias Marquez spoke about how the ethos platform allows brands to offer NFTs through a fully branded experience that can utilize blockchain innovations to support discounts, airdrops, early access or special products campaigns.
Jon Safran, CEO, KEH Photography also joined GELF co-founder Jim Okamura on stage to talk about the growth of the circular economy. As the leading photography recommerce retailer in North America with deep category expertise in premium photography and videography equipment, KEH is an indispensable resource for Creators.
Jon also sat down with Michael LeBlanc, host of the Global Ecommerce Leaders Podcast, at GELF LA ’23 and provided a deeper dive into the opportunities that the circular economy provides global retail brands. As far back as the early days of eBay and Craigslist, ecommerce has offered an inherently proposition. For photography equipment, the game was first an offline venture of buying and selling at local camera shops and then evolved to include neighbors on Craigslist.
Recommerce evolved to advance the state of the second hand market from local to global by leveraging the Internet to broaden the reach to include international buyers and sellers. KEH emerged to specifically solve some problems; one of which was authenticity. Jon explains that when you think about buying a technical product – like a camera – from someone else that you don’t know, there’s not a lot of transparency and there’s not a lot of assurance. KEH has become the trusted middleman.
On the podcast, Jon speaks about the origins of KEH – a circular economy story that sounds a lot like the early storylines around the growth of cross-border ecommerce, which for many international shoppers, was a quest for authenticity. Consumers in markets like China would leverage the global reach of ecommerce to buy from trusted US retail brands that acted to authenticate a product and to guarantee that it’s the real thing and not a counterfeit.
Have a listen to our latest Global Ecommerce Leaders Podcast to hear how KEH is helping the circular economy grow well outside of small local pockets of commerce – and beyond the boundaries of fashion where brands like RealReal, ThredUp and Poshmark often dominates the discussion of recommerce. The circular economy offers bigger value propositions beyond fashion and apparel – and KEH is a great example of the need to not only confirm that the product isn’t counterfeit, but that is also in proper working order.
Stay tuned as we develop the program for GELF NYC ’23 on October 12th where we will be discussing how global ecommerce leaders are driving sustainability practices throughout their organization and embracing the circular economy and recommerce and exploring how blockchain, NFTs and other innovations will drive global sales growth.
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