repoze.com.au launches ‘Make Room For Magic’ platform via Chapter and Strange Animals

repoze.com.au – a new national marketplace for pre-loved kid and youth gear recently launched. Following 18-months of brand and product development with partners Chapter and Strange Animals, this new brand promises to declutter our world and make room for magic!

Built from scratch, with brand at its core, repoze enters the circular economy at a pivotal time. National research, conducted during development, found that 87% of Australian parents have bought or sold pre-owned kids’ gear – however, safety concerns, scam avoidance and time friction are key barriers to participation in the circular economy.

Rather than retrofitting a brand onto a functional product, repoze was developed brand-first in partnership with Chapter, who led strategy, naming and platform development.

The resulting brand platform is brought to life through the line – MAKE ROOM FOR MAGIC – positioning resale not as second-best, but as a smarter, lighter way to participate in the kids’ economy and declutter our world.

The web platform itself was engineered and built by Strange Animals, with the creative idea informing everything from naming conventions to UX flows.

While the brand’s visual identity was created by designer Andrew Allingham, with a clean, minimal aesthetic including 3D brand characters, Buy and Sal.

Michelle La Roche, creator of Repoze, said: “Dean and Hannah came highly recommended to me, and I knew from our first meeting that they would give me the direction I needed to create something special with Repoze. I have learned a lot from them, and continue to do so, about brand identity and what it takes to achieve real cut-through. Developing our mascots, Buy-n-Sal has been the best part of our journey so far.

“But beyond that, I have always felt like we are a team. They are genuinely invested in the success of what we are trying to achieve with Repoze, building a marketplace that makes it easy for families to buy and sell quality preloved kids gear and keep great products in circulation instead of going to waste.

“Both are legends and always up for a laugh. Their expertise really complements each other, and there is a clear depth of knowledge that they have generously shared with me throughout the journey of market research and brand development.”

Dean Hunt, Founding Creative Partner, Chapter, said: “You don’t often get to witness the birth of a brand star. Michelle had a vision and we were stoked to be invited to co-create this brand from inception. With a mission to ‘declutter our world and make room for magic’, the Repoze brand has brand growth in its DNA. Big thanks to all at Allingham and Strange Animals. And one of the best CDs ever, Michelle LaRoche. You deserve all the success to come.”

Emily Colman, CGO at Strange Animals, said: “Strange Animals led the end-to-end design and technical build of the repoze web and app platforms, from early UX strategy through to a fully realised marketplace experience across web and mobile. The team architected a custom technology stack combining Sharetribe and Flutter, with deep AI integration woven throughout the listing experience to remove the friction that typically holds sellers back. Every interaction, from onboarding to checkout, was designed to reflect the brand’s philosophy that resale should feel effortless, not exhausting. The result is a platform built to scale nationally from day one, with the infrastructure and intelligence to grow alongside the community it serves.

Charlie Apps, Founder and GM of Technology at Strange Animals, said: “repoze is one of those rare projects where brand and technology were genuinely built hand in hand. Michelle, Tom, Hannah, and Dean gave us an incredible brand and business concept to work from; our job was to make the technology live up to it. Sharetribe gave us a strong marketplace foundation, but to meet repoze’s needs, we had to solve complex problems and push the platform far beyond its out-of-the-box capabilities with custom integrations and AI-driven listing flows. It’s been a deeply technical build, and a testament to what happens when every partner at the table is pulling in the same direction.”

repoze launched nationally this month.

Credits
Brand Leadership – Chapter
UX and build – Strange Animals
Brand Design – Allingham