There's a stigma with buying refurbished products, and this guy wants to turn that around

By the time Izzy Fischweicher turned 20, he was still living at his parents' house - but he was busy brokering products for a living and forging deals with manufacturers so he could resell items for some extra change.

Fischweicher was so confident about his business that he packed his bags, said "see you later" to college, and kicked back in an angels investor's space to launch Equipped - an e-commerce business that he founded along with his friend Yanky Lipsker.

Now the duo has launched another startup called efurb, and Fischweicher wants it to become the pulse of the refurbished product universe.

"There is no place on the internet right now where you can go somewhere and have a huge selection of refurbished products in the way that we do it," Fischweicher said. "Ebay is maybe one of the spots but you're dealing with third party marketplaces and you don't get consistent quality."

Users can now browse through 2,000 tech toys online, from subwoofers and home theater systems to iPhone 5s. Each product costs about 70 percent less than brand new retail, and has a one year warranty.

Fischweicher admits that refurbs are usually a "crapshoot" for consumers, because sometimes these products are broken, defective, and not tested properly - especially from companies that don't make refurbs their first priority.

Fischweicher says the lack of tech support and watered down warranties are to blame, and that the stigma affects the seller too.

"Big places are either breaking even or losing on their refurbs, and everything associated with them is kept at a minimal cost," Fischweicher said. "They can just push them off to the manufacturer if a product breaks down. Not everyone is willing to do the quality control we do."

Efurb promises that when customers send in their product for warranty, the efurb experts can hammer out the issue in just 24 hours. This is unheard of for a warranty, according to Fischweicher, since big manufacturers often take a week or two and communicating where the product is in that process to the consumer is often spotty.

The startup uses in-house experts, tech, and systems to create a "really scalable model," according to Fischweicher. And the figures reflect that: just three years after its inception, efurb has generated more than $100 million in total revenue.

"Refurbs were the underbelly of the business around ten, fifteen years ago, but not anymore," Fischweicher said. "As time goes on, refurbs are getting more and more popular and efurb is going to expedite that."

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