eBay named Ragpiq a regional winner in eBay's 2026 Circular Fashion Fund. Co-founded by Patrick White and Gwynn Kijkanakorn,  two uni friends who spent years throwing everything at the wall before landing on the problem worth solving.

Ragpiq is a platform that connects clothing resellers with people who want their wardrobes gone but have no appetite for the work of selling them. By outsourcing the selling to people who are actually good at it, Ragpiq is tackling one of the most entrenched inefficiencies in second-hand fashion: that most people have simply given up on reselling altogether.

A few weeks ago, Patrick travelled to New York City to pitch alongside the global finalists. We caught up with him to hear more.

Could you share some insights into your background and the journey that led you to start Ragpiq?

Gwynn and I met at uni. We got put together on a consulting internship, clicked like no tomorrow, and ended up both being the dux’s of our class. We were both resellers from a young age and both pretty entrepreneurial, so once we realised we worked well together, the question was never if we'd build something, it was what.

We spent the next two to three years throwing absolutely everything at the wall to see what would stick, all of it circling one stubborn idea: secondhand sucked for a lot of people, and there had to be a better way to do it. We built three resale apps. We opened our own physical consignment warehouse in Thornbury that held a whopping 2,000 items at its peak. We basically lived in that building, and every tool and bit of software we made there is what we've since rebuilt into Ragpiq.

The deeper drive is that we both believe innovation is the best industry you can be in. When you look at how asset appreciation has outpaced income over the last 60 years, building something genuinely valuable to society beats a 9-to-5 every time. We'd rather be broke for five years out of uni, get comfortable being broke, and build something that matters.

Take me back to that pitch room. What was it really like, how did you prepare, and what would you tell other businesses heading into pitching opportunities?

A fever dream, honestly. But I felt so ridiculously prepared that it actually felt right. I'd butchered my last two live-audience pitches, so they do say, third time's the charm, but really I think I'd just gotten sick of being nervous and not being myself.

Getting there was its own comedy. When I realised I'd booked flights landing 12 hours before the event, I felt like the dumbest smart founder heading to New York. I slept 12 hours on the plane, then had to somehow find another 8 that night, over room service steak. Pretty scary maths. But the venue saved me: a gorgeous old Georgian hotel in the fashion precinct, right opposite Broadway and all the little cafes. The pitch room itself was a cosy, tavern-style space with low ceilings and plush furniture, so it felt less like a boardroom and more like a comedy night. I'd planned exactly one laugh, and thankfully it landed.

On preparation, it was AI, AI, AI. Every single word got scrutinised by multiple language models, every slide rebuilt and re-rendered in Claude Design until it was almost too perfect. The biggest lesson I learned about memorising a long pitch is that it has nothing to do with how hard you cram and everything to do with how early you start. The number of nights you leave between memorising and performing is what counts, because your mind coagulates and processes while you sleep. That's what makes each slide feel like second nature.

So my advice to anyone heading into a pitch: start ridiculously early, and practice in front of actual people, because pitching to a room is a completely different animal to running lines alone. One tactic I swear by is spiking your heart rate before you rehearse, do push-ups or run a lap outside first. It recreates the adrenaline you'll feel on the day, so the real thing doesn't catch your body off guard.

What inspired the idea of flipping the reselling model?

Two things: the figures, and bitter personal experience. We hated reselling. It's fun the first time, then it's just labour, and eventually you're sitting there going, why am I effectively working a $20-an-hour hospitality shift to sell my own jumper?

Then the numbers backed up the feeling. Around 70% of people's wardrobes go unworn. About 39% have outright given up on reselling. And the number one reason people resell isn't to make money, it's to declutter. So you've got millions of people who genuinely want their clothes gone but have zero appetite for the work of selling them. The obvious answer was to stop asking them to do it. Outsource the selling to people who are actually good at it and enjoy it, and let everyone else just enjoy a tidy wardrobe and a payout.

What do you think about the environmental impact, and does that mission shape your decisions as a founder?

It shapes everything, but I try to be clear-eyed about how it works. The environmental impact is real: every garment we keep moving is one that doesn't get replaced by something new. The average Australian wardrobe is sitting on around $4,000 of unworn clothes, and most of it is destined for a bin bag eventually.

But I've also learned that people don't change behaviour for the planet alone. Around 60% of younger shoppers say affordability is their number one reason for buying secondhand, and most of that generation flat-out doesn't trust brand sustainability claims anymore. So we don't lead with guilt. We make the sustainable choice the easy, profitable, slightly addictive one, then let the environmental upside come for free. If we get the convenience right, the circularity takes care of itself at scale. That's the decision that matters.

How do you build and maintain that trust on both sides of the marketplace?
The most important thing is security: your items are protected by Ragpiq. Our resellers are carefully vetted and go through a scrutinised onboarding process, so you know you're in safe hands. That's exactly why a moderated platform makes more sense than fending for yourself, researching strangers and hoping for the best. It's the same problem Uber solved. People didn't want to climb into a car with someone they'd never met, but once enough people trusted the system, and the system held a genuinely high standard of service, you reach a kind of bliss. That's what we're reaching for.

We build that trust structurally rather than just promising it. Consignors keep ownership of their items until they sell, so they're never handing over value and hoping for the best. Resellers are vetted and local, not anonymous accounts on the other side of the country, which is where hyper-local really matters: there's real accountability when the person handling your wardrobe is only a few suburbs away. And we keep both sides visible to each other through the whole process, so nobody is left wondering what happened to their bag or their stock.

What does being selected as a finalist mean to your business, and what are you hoping the funding will unlock for Ragpiq?

First, validation. We had so much warm, supportive feedback from people in New York, and trust me, they're every bit as blunt as we are in Australia. They give it to you straight, no emotion. That's exactly why it meant so much, because it told us what we're building isn't just an Australian fix. It's universal, and it's a seriously good way of solving a global problem.

I'll be honest though: we didn't win the final investment, and the reason was traction. We simply didn't have enough of it yet. Far from being a blow, that's been clarifying. It means the job now is to put our heads down, build the flywheel and the system, and obsess over every single customer and interaction so we're ready to win the next one. The whole experience taught me that fundraising, networking and the operational glamour is the devil dressed in fancy clothes, always trying to lure you away from the only things that actually matter: your customers and your product. That's where we'll be 90% of the time for the foreseeable future.

The funding gives us serious runway to push our AI software further, and to completely rebuild our social media and branding so it genuinely speaks to our audience. A good chunk will also go into meeting resellers, boutiques and secondhand stores right across the country. Honestly, wining and dining the best operators in the business is one of the best uses of our money I can think of. So if you're reading this and you're scaling your resale, come find us. You won't regret it.

Discover more about Ragpiq here.