How ReThrift Works

ReThrift.app is a three-part platform that bridges the gap between fast fashion browsing and sustainable alternatives. We make the carbon cost of buying new clothing visible at the point of purchase and connect consumers to existing second-hand alternatives.

Our Solution

1

Chrome Extension

When users browse fast fashion sites (Shein, Zara, H&M, Boohoo), a sidebar automatically appears showing similar second-hand items from local thrift stores, with price comparisons and carbon savings displayed.

2

Thrift Store Upload App

A mobile app enabling charity shops and thrift stores to photograph and list inventory with Vinted-like simplicity. AI automatically generates descriptions and tags.

3

Consumer Marketplace

A web platform where shoppers can browse, search, and purchase second-hand items directly, with Stripe-powered checkout and transparent carbon impact metrics.

The Technology

Visual Similarity Search

OpenAI's vision model generates descriptions for uploaded items. These are embedded into vectors using text-embedding-3-small and stored in Supabase with pgvector.

Real-Time Matching

The extension scrapes fast fashion product titles, embeds them, and runs a nearest-neighbour search to find visually similar thrift items in milliseconds.

Carbon Calculation

Each product is tagged with its estimated carbon footprint (e.g., 16-28 kg CO₂e for jeans). Second-hand purchases display the avoided emissions.