BuyWander, the Spokane, Wash.-born startup building an auction marketplace for returned and overstocked retail goods, has moved its headquarters to the Seattle area and grown to 325 employees as it expands its warehouse network across the country.
The company said Tuesday that it has added four executives to its leadership team, including two former Amazon employees, as it pushes into new markets including Denver and Chicago.
BuyWander is now based in Kent, Wash., where it has 45 employees. The company said it moved its corporate headquarters from Spokane to the Seattle area this month, putting its leadership team closer to the region’s large retail and e-commerce ecosystem.
GeekWire last wrote about BuyWander in April 2025, when the startup employed 22 people and was on the verge of opening a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Kent after raising $2 million in seed funding.
Founded in 2023 by Jordan Allen and Brock Kowalchuk, BuyWander’s marketplace sells returned and overstocked merchandise from retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart and Home Depot. Products start at a $1 opening bid in seven-day online auctions, with buyers picking up purchases at local BuyWander warehouses rather than having them shipped.
Current items for sale on the marketplace include: window air conditioning units; steel gate fencing; carbon fiber rear trunk spoilers; Jeep Wrangler seat covers; countertop microwave ovens, pop-up canopy tents and dozens of other products.
The model is aimed at giving returned merchandise another route to consumers rather than leaving it in warehouses or sending it to landfills. BuyWander’s technology is designed to scan, sort and identify inventory before putting it up for auction.
The sector is filled with rivals, including companies such as Mac.bid, B-Stock, Liquidation.com and ReturnPro, which focuses more on solutions for retailers.
Allen previously founded Stay Alfred, a Spokane-based short-term rental company that shut down in 2020, amid the pandemic, after expanding to more than 30 cities.
“Auction commerce is having a real moment, and it’s exciting to build the team to meet it,” Allen said in a statement Tuesday.
The four new executives are:
- Laura Sasser, chief operating officer, who spent nearly 20 years at liquidation and inventory-management company Channel Control Merchants and most recently was senior vice president of operations at FullSpeed Automotive where she oversaw facilities, inventory management, and loss prevention.
- Daniel Kiepfer, vice president of data and AI, who previously led data and analytics at Seattle online jewelry retailer Blue Nile and held roles at Microsoft, RealSelf and McKinsey.
- Abu Marcose, senior director of warehouse technology, who spent 12 years at Amazon, most recently as a senior software development manager on Amazon’s Supply Chain Optimization Technologies team.
- Roger Ling, director of marketing, who previously led integrated marketing at DoorDash and held go-to-market and product marketing roles at Amazon, including work on Prime Big Deal Days and Amazon Business.
Marcose’s hiring is particularly notable for BuyWander’s push to build technology around its warehouse operations. At Amazon, he worked on capacity planning, network optimization and generative and agentic AI systems used in fulfillment operations.
Ling’s experience also fits BuyWander’s retail focus, bringing experience in both Amazon’s e-commerce operation and DoorDash’s consumer marketplace.
Sasser’s experience will help the two-year-old startup expand into new markets, helping customers find deals in new geographies.
“My focus now is building the operational backbone that lets it scale across every new market we enter,” she said in a statement.
BuyWander said it currently operates eight warehouses, with Denver and Chicago among its newest locations, and plans to continue expanding nationally over the next year. The bulk of its employee base works in stocking, intake and customer service.
The company is backed by Triple Impact Capital, Animal Capital, Data Tech Fund, Vinay Menda, Quiet Capital, Maria Routimine, Eric Klein, James Dorman and Tom Simpson.
