KURB Newsletter December 2025
Happy KURBs year! And what a year it has been.
While we have retired the KURBsmas elves that doesn’t mean the work clock is stopping at KURB HQ! We stayed true to our word and crunched out features week after week, and have done so consistently for almost a year! Our tickets for one of Stockholm’s most exciting startup technology events have been booked, Tech Arena 2026, and we’ve been scheming a whole new exciting service for next year. But among all that bustle we decided this might be an ample time to look over all KURB has done over 2025.
This year we made huge leaps on the technology, business and culture fronts of KURB while remaining entirely bootstrapped! There is no Angel Investor, we are not Venture Capital backed nor do we have the man power of companies like Vinted or Vestiaire Collective. Nevertheless we have built the most comprehensive and effective secondhand designer sourcing system on the planet. Thanks to your feedback this year we have added over 200 vendors and 150 brands, systematically improved the KURB technology performance, Revamped our website several times, introduced features like: KURB Lens, KURB Pro the favorites systems, the saved filters systems, the followers system. On top of that we have assembled a wicked team of fashion nerds, now from all walks of life. Now there are 7 of us all bound under the KURB banner with the belief that we can realise the untapped potential of this incredible ecosystem! We’re slowly finding our stride on what works on our cultural vehicle but have many new ideas on that front aswell, hopefully returning to some of the playful posts we once basked in. Most exciting of all is that this is only the beginning of what’s ahead for KURB, next year we’ve laid out a barrage of technology defining updates.
This month featured one of our biggest updates, KURB Lens, our very own reverse-image search built on top of the KURB search engine. Now you are more ready than ever for those surprise encounters with your dream garment that may be bit too pricey or the wrong size. All you need to do is snap a pic of it and let KURB search the entire secondhand designer market for you to explore more within your budget or maybe even a better fit entirely! No longer will prospective pieces need to be begotten to your digital image archive- you can redeem all these opportunities through KURB Lens. Additionally, while in the depths of the KURB doom-scroll it’s easy to discover a myriad of nearly perfect pieces, now you can turn those into precisely perfect through our new “Find similar items” button which allows you to efficiently find more like that item. Both these features can also be layered with the existing KURB filters so you can leverage our engine’s power to fine tune your search experience.
Now our items indexed on our platform are more precise than ever through a wholly new item-checking system. The synchronicity between the item price and availability has been a long standing problem on KURB but this month we put some real elbow grease into fixing it. We developed a whole new dedicated system that routinely checks items features and updates them accordingly. This means that now while exploring items indexed on KURB you are less likely to be met with the nasty surprise of a item listed as available but actually sold!
With the ever expanding roster of brands and vendors indexed on KURB we decided to spend sometime to help users navigate through our directory. Starting with an entirely revamped vendors page, enabling you to sort the vendors alphabetically, by region or by type and then on top of more easily comb through them using the search bar. We also carefully went through and updated all the information associated with vendors to give you a better ideas of their business. It’s been needed a long time but we finally made a brands page. You can now explore the entire directory of brands indexed on KURB on one page- giving you a glimpse of what’s available and what they offer. Perhaps you may even find wholly new brands that cater to your taste!
We have been making a concerted effort to make our KURB the place for you to indulge your fascination with fashion. We have furthered this ambition with our latest addition, the follow system, allowing you to express your personal taste through following an array of brands and vendors you adore. At this point we are introducing the ability but it will play a bigger part on the platform in the foreseeable future! There have also been an endless stream of cosmetic updates but this was just to summarise the most substantial updates this month.
As per usual we have added many more vendors and brands to the KURB search system. We have distinctly added more classic Japanese denim brands like: Samurai Jeans, Momotaro, Blue Blue Japan, Flat Head, Sugar Cane, Iron Heart, alongside luxury outdoor brands like: Osprey, Snow Peak, Klättermusen. On top of which a stream of new marketplaces and independent sellers have been added to the platform such as: Tori, Laan, OLX, Glintz, Upstairs Garments, Out & Back!
With 2026 we have some big plans for KURB, it’s pretty ambitious but I don’t think there’s any harm in teasing it out a bit. One big feature the follower system will enable us to initialise is a more intelligent For You Page, so now if you’re exhausted by the doom-scroll and just want to see what’s out there you can have a place to endlessly scroll for a catered feed of clothing. A much needed update we’ve begun working towards is intelligent listing sorting. It’s been a long standing issue that there can be noise on KURB- and to resolve this we’re working on a system which will help us clean up past and future products on the platform. Our most radical plan is to leverage all of our data to offer ecosystem scale reports. One massive component of KURB we have not been taking advantage of is our immense wealth of data do things for you guys like: produce ecosystem scale reports, a more reliable analytics platform, help you discover better deals and search more efficiently through our indexes.
To wrap the year up JP put together a sick Spotify playlist for you guys. A bunch of new melodramatic sounds to ease you into 2026! In related news I recovered my old laptop and realised it has heaps of sounds I listened to about a decade ago which. Hoping to sneak some of those into the next newsletter.
That’s 2025 for us! Hope you’ve enjoyed the constant updates we’ve had this month. We have many more planned for the next month, maybe not as rapidly but we will see. You can keep track of all KURB going ons through our Instagram, Discord and Pinterest. Happy new year! We look forward to catching you in the next.