Spirit Of 608: Fashion, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability + Tech

I love startup stories that involve taking a manual, real-life process and creating a tech solution that mimics it and stories from founders who, in the quest to solve their own problems, end up bringing needed new ways of doing things into areas begging for innovation. This week’s guest is doing BOTH. During her years as a fashion brand rep, Melodie found herself going the extra mile to serve the stores she visited. In fact, she was quite literally going the extra mile by driving her retail clients’ excess inventory to other stores, swapping out merch even though it sometimes meant driving across state lines — all in the name of helping the brands she worked with maintain value (vs. ending up on the sale rack) and the store owners sell through their merchandise. After discovering that one retailer in her network might be able to easily sell what wasn’t moving n another store, she founded Swap Retail to help brands and retailers buy, sell and swap their excess inventory. Now a retailer herself and co-founde