His company may be working under a new name, but Teddy Raskin’s mission to keep usable products in circulation remains just as fervent as when he first developed it four years ago.
And he hopes that early success will help more potential customers trust his company with their most valuable assets as he strives for a better second life for those items.
Raskin unveiled Vessel this week. Formerly Simpli, the company has developed a scalable way to redirect expired and excess inventory to charitable organizations, allowing for it to find new use rather than get incinerated or sent to a landfill.
“What do the biggest companies in the world do about waste? It’s often overlooked because there’s no solution at scale about waste,” Raskin said. “We asked, ‘If we built a way to get this off your hands and donate it, would you allow us to do this?’ They said of course they would, but there have to be a few conditions.”
Simpli was born to meet those conditions, and the rebranded Vessel will look to expand upon them, Raskin said. The company uses an all-encompassing platform to allow customers to analyze more than 550,000 nonprofits across more than 160 million data points to find the best donation match. It then allows customers to track the donations — Vessel manages the freight and logistics — and record the financial and sustainability documentation they’ll need.
It does so at a lower cost than destruction, Raskin said. After raising additional funds last year, the New York City-based company was ready for a bigger-scale launch this fall as it looks to capture more market share.
“We’ve given our brands a way to donate inventory at scale in a way that’s economically viable,” he said. “We track everything. These charities, do they have a warehouse to store these products? How much can they absorb? … we have a built-in in-house layer to ingest this info, weigh it and give our team details to leverage it and do what they do.”
That team focuses on medical products, personal care, and health and beauty products at this time. Simpli launched in 2022 and has helped brands like Estee Lauder and Smashbox donate more than $83 million worth of products, keeping more than 2,000 tons of materials from landfills or burning.
“We want to focus on where we’re doing really well right now,” he said. “We can guarantee we beat destruction pricing all day. Other categories are doing well, like merchandise, but it sometimes takes more creativity to make this viable there.”
The companies’ customers say Vessel’s work shows how well it’s doing.
“Through partners like Vessel, we’re able to provide beauty and self-care products that encourage self-expression, celebrate individuality, and remind our girls that they deserve to feel confident and valued,” said Millicen Perez, vice president of strategic partnerships and events at Girls Inc. “What makes this partnership even more meaningful is knowing that products that might otherwise go to waste are instead bringing joy to girls in our communities.”
The company’s work is focused in North America, where Raskin has numerous logistics and other connections through his prior work. He has helped arrange international deliveries for companies, though, and considers expansion to other countries a logical step if companies in those nations are open to Vessel’s mission, although in the short term he said Vessel is already hitting capacity constraints for 2027.
Of course, if a company should reach out, Raskin is confident Vessel can help that company do the right thing.
“We have the ability to make a dent in senseless waste. This is such a great way for brands to showcase commitment to their communities,” he said. “Our customers are typically the best in the world at what they do. We tell them to focus on that, go grow. When you have products that oversell, are overproduced, soon to expire — as long as the integrity of the products is there, don’t worry about it. We will find a place for it.
“There are $163 billion of products that go to waste each year. If we can eat into 1% of that, that’s a good start.”
