Why Upstream

Days, not quarters. Nothing for your engineers. Built for the operator who receives someone else's returns.

There are two ways challenged inventory gets handled today. By hand, or by an enterprise platform sold to the brand. Upstream is the third way, and it was built on a warehouse floor by people who inherited 3 million items and had to sell them.

Book a walkthroughHow it works
Photograph · The floor
Where it started
The pile · The phone · The record
Built on a warehouse floor
3 million items
01 · The honest comparison

3 ways to handle it.

By hand
Enterprise returns platforms
Upstream
Time to live
Already running, badly
Quarters
Next day with Quick Start. Weeks for the full install.
Integration
None
Deep, IT led, per system
None to start. One export for attribution. API only for write back.
Built for
Whoever is nearest
The brand or retailer
The 3PL, the network and the floor that receives the box
Identification
A person and a guess
Barcode and feed dependent
From the photograph, no feed required
Channels
One, usually
Fixed by contract
Channel agnostic. The data chooses.
What will not sell alone
Sits
Liquidated as a lot
Manifested or bundled, line by line
Who sells it
You, if anyone
A partner network
You from your store, or Upstream as seller of record
Modular
No
No
Buy Identify, add Route and Resell, add Fulfill only if needed
02 · Where it came from

Built because we had the pile.

Upstream began as the software a team wrote to get itself out of a problem. A warehouse full of goods nobody could identify, a bank that wanted them sold, and no tool on the market that would do it. The identification, the routing, the resale and the light warehouse system all came from that floor. The company was acquired in April 2025 and became Upstream, a Vendidit company, on the Vendidit platform for identifying, valuing and moving physical assets.

03 · What we are not

Plainly.

01

Not a system of record

Your WMS or ERP stays the system of record. Upstream writes to it.

02

Not a freight carrier

Products in motion are someone else's business. Upstream works where products are at rest.

03

Not a marketplace you have to run

You can sell from your own store. You do not have to.

04

Not an enterprise WMS

Fulfill is a light warehouse system built for recommerce, installed only where it is needed.

04 · Proof

The market is real. So is the software.

$849.9B

Merchandise expected back to US retailers in 2025

15.8%

Of annual retail sales returned

19.3%

Of online sales returned

$890B

Returned in 2024, at 16.9 percent of sales

Source: National Retail Federation and Happy Returns, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape, October 15, 2025.

More than 100 million dollars of sales and warehouse movement have gone through the system since it was built. Customer results are shared in the walkthrough, with the customer's permission.

See it on a live account.

30 minutes, from the photograph to the listing.

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