marketplace
role
co-founder
year
2026
timeline
6 months
team
Kristin Bautista, Madelyn Lee, Tracy Sheng
tools
pinterest, instagram, figma, replit, shopify
OVERVIEW
whiff started from my own shelf of half-used bottles. perfume is expensive, taste is personal, and the resale market that should fix that feels like a flea market — no trust, too many fakes. so three of us built the marketplace we actually wanted: a place to buy and sell pre-loved fragrance where discovery and trust are the product, not an afterthought.
CONTEXT
The problem started with my own conviction of a perfume collector, when perfume is too expensive when taste is personal, especially when I am also guilty of half-used bottles. I knew that resale existed, yet felt like a flea market with no trust for counterfeits. I wanted something that could solve this problem
FINAL ARTIFACTS
Seller Page (MVP)
Buyer Page (MVP)
KEY MOMENTS & DECISIONS
Peer-to-peer → Consignment → Peer-to-peer
Sometimes, as founders you have to listen to your gut when you know what’s working. People can give you all kinds of advice without context, yet if you choose to follow your way, you’ll get it. Fake that the idea works until it doesn’t because confidence needs actions.
Founder-led Sales
This is inevitable. Can’t stress more about it. Do not think that your social media will make you money, because word of mouth always matter more than anything else.
IMPACT
1K in revenue in 1 month
Social Media Engagement +370%
REFLECTION
Do work that matters
As a marketing major, it was our first instinct to create marketing campaigns for something that didn’t exist yet. It worked for sure, yet without a strong backbone of someone technical, the business is hard to continue.
Needs a team to make the dream work
How to lead a team effectively was to make sure everyone is a part of the process. Sure, one can bear with all the credit when something is launched successfully. However, if one is not involved significantly, it is hard to keep everyone going for a long time.
I had a tendency to take on too much or does not communicate with overall vision. We live and we learned and that this has been an opportunity for me to grow as a leader in making a dream come true.
Credits to Madelyn for branding
