The Story of Max Retail: Building the Infrastructure for Independent Retail’s Future

Sometimes the most transformative tech companies start with the simplest manual solutions. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Melodie van der Baan shared how driving a Sprinter van full of designer collections across the country led to building Max Retail, a platform now helping thousands of independent retailers turn unsold inventory into meaningful revenue.

A Career Built Around Inventory

Without formal fashion education, Melodie had to get creative to break into the industry. “I actually went to the local art institute and found graduate fashion designers,” she recalls. “I said, hey, you have nothing to lose. Why don’t you pay me a commission and I’ll place you in independent retail stores?”

This first venture gave her the confidence to open her own retail store, growing it to “producing a million dollars a year in revenue” from a $25,000 investment. But it was during her time as a sales representative that she discovered the problem that would define her future.

The Problem That Wouldn’t Go Away

Driving her Sprinter van from South Florida to Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, Melodie encountered the same issue everywhere: “When I entered a store, they would point out to me what didn’t sell from the season before.” The brands wouldn’t take back merchandise, but retailers needed to clear inventory before making new purchases.

Her solution was elegantly simple: matchmaking between stores. “If I was in Baltimore looking at a size run of striped dresses that were not performing well, but I knew they were blowing out in Birmingham, I would call that buyer in Birmingham.” This manual process worked, but as her husband pointed out, “Mel, this is not a you problem. This is an industry problem.”

The First Technical Attempt

By 2016, Melodie couldn’t ignore the problem any longer. Following Steve Blank’s Lean Startup methodology, she began customer discovery: “I just started calling brands and retailers and saying, ‘Hey, it’s Melody, your favorite rep, I’m a retailer now, like you. But I remember you had this problem. What have you been doing about it?'” Their answer: “Nothing, Mel. There’s been nothing to help me.”

The team’s first attempt at building a solution hit a snag when an engineer friend reviewed it: “This isn’t anything useful. I could rebuild it in a month.” Those became “famous last words” as he spent the next two years building their first B2B marketplace.

Pivoting Through Crisis

Launching in February 2020 proved challenging as COVID shut down retail stores nationwide. The team had to rethink everything. An accidental email blast to both retailers and brands revealed new opportunities in liquidation, leading to partnerships with Guilt Group and eventually Poshmark.

The Infrastructure Play

What started as a simple marketplace evolved into something much more fundamental. “We are actually e-commerce infrastructure,” Melodie explains. The platform helps retailers and brands “sell their excess inventory across a network of demand that would otherwise be too challenging for them to do on their own.”

The impact is measurable: average monthly payouts to retailers grew from $151 in early 2022 to $1,200 today, with top performers earning over $20,000 monthly. This represents life-changing revenue for many independent retailers.

The Future Vision

Looking ahead five years, Melodie’s vision is ambitious but focused: “Max retail five years from now is on five of the seven continents. Sorry, Antarctica. You’re probably never going to be one of them.” The goal is for “anyone who has an audience can tap into our supply and become a distributor of the products in Max retail.”

With over 2 million independent retailers between North America and Europe as their target market, Max Retail aims to be everywhere “inventory is managed today and sold tomorrow.” For founders watching this space, it’s a masterclass in how solving a specific, persistent problem can evolve into building fundamental infrastructure for an entire industry.

As Melodie advises: “Don’t go looking for a problem to solve. Solve the problem that haunts you day and night, and you will never want to remove yourself from it.”