KURB Newsletter May 2026

This month put us head to head with KURB's most sinister inner demons, while I'm relieved to say we came out on top- there are many more lurching around the corner. We were up to our knees in feedback from you guys but we're rapidly iterating through all of it. There's been a total revamp to our search technology, addressing many of your concerns and enabling us to more rapidly expand KURB's coverage. Our Instagram, Pinterest and (freshly anointed) TikTok have been given a spruce I will detail on later. And we put out our first blog article on our own blog system that details the trials and tribulations of not being a AI-fronted technology in this age of AI hysteria. Read on to get your fill on what we've been up to this month along with some little teasers sprinkled between!

We've been all ears as of late at KURB, gleefully listening to what you guys have to say and chatting on the secondhand designer ecosystem in general. Many of the heavily requested items we have already been checked off the list: like being able to better image search, cleaning up the the filter menu UI, not being automatically logged out. But the greatest thing we have done, perhaps even since KURB's inception, is solve critical issues with our search and sold-checking technology. Now our system searches about 3 times more efficiently while also searching magnitudes more often. What this means is there will be much less latency between when an item is available and when KURB indexes. Though in turn this also introduces a more core problem we had been having, checking the real availability of an item. And I am proud to announce that we have also greatly improved that in tandem. So now you are much less likely to find an item on KURB only to see it being sold out on the actual website. Of course there is plenty of tweaking to go, this leap in our fundamental technology allows us to efficiently solve item fidelity precision into the foreseeable future. As a testament, we also added almost 100 vendors over the last couple weeks thanks to it.

Truth be told, when it comes to the feedback it can be a struggle to keep on track with, and to be honest they're about 50% focused on KURB and 50% just chatting on what's up in the secondhand designer universe. But please allow me to blab on about all the other elements we've improved. The filter menu and small device searching experience has received a substantial overhaul. There was a specific focus to improve the keyword search experience on small devices, with fixing up some misaligned sizing filters (and enriched size matching in the search technology), simplifying the dropdown selection for many features, disallowing the drop-downs from hiding outside your viewport and and made it easier to update keywords. Much elbow grease was put into improving the the image search UX as well, so now it has greater precision when image searching and the same filter power in the keyword search is available, additionally once you either paste, upload or link an image to search on you can further crop the image to really target against what you're looking for. As usual we polished a lot of the small things, like improving search speeds, and polishing the design of the search cards and slide-in. With all that being said and done, the laundry list of things we will be working on is not slowing down- June's already looking like it will knock all of us off our feet.

The little GPU hearts of our laptops have been spinning on overtime as we finally have dived into the maws of short form content for our social media. With each TikTok I create I am glaringly reminded of me inability to master social media, but I will persist. We will make it through this episode of my extremely poor audio mixing and reach the viral promised lands. I will not shrink away from the wily ways of the punitive TikTok video restriction system, if anything it's forced me to re-double my strategies and efforts. There is a robust catalogue of TikTok ideas I am excited to share with you all and would appreciate if you could support my delusion by giving our TikTok a follow. After months of tribulation we have constructed several concentrated Instagram formats that build on the KURB technology, namely: Staff pick's, product analytics, fitpic breakdown's and digital mannequins. Not wholly unique to us but something we are excited to give our own flavour on. Additionally, our long neglected Discord community has been thrown into the roadmap to also receive a generous expression of our antics! Think, eliminating all the fluff with routine user feedback cycles.

To think there's more to say but this is what a dedicated breakdown post is all about. Last month you had us whinge and moan about being a fashion tech company, now you can read about our concentrated rage on the AI-glaze happening in the start-up scene. KURB is absolutely not above being cringe, but what we just can't excise out of ourselves is the agony any kind of AI orientated conversation takes, which I hope helps you understand the ailments we face. The real tragedy here is KURB does use AI, and I'm poised to surrender most of my summer refining our proprietary AI models to improve the search experience and offer some new exciting features. For those of you tired of us pissing into the wind our next blog article will be much more outward looking and optimistic, shifting our gaze to a whole new constellation of vendors which have begun to rise in the secondhand designer market!

I have really outdone myself this month. Masterfully crafting a playlist with exactly 0 harmony but nevertheless still choc'd full of bangers that will have your cortisol spiking like no other. Help us help you blood let your ears a bit and contribute to the global hysteria we are all perpetually victim to.

This is usually the space where I be extra silly but what I've learned is that people don't know how sick our Pro offer is? You can get phone, computer, microwaves or whatever other appliance alerts across the entire secondhand designer market for exactly what you're looking for the minute it comes online FOR FREE. This covers over 800 vendors (many of whom you would have never heard of) capturing extremely niche and scarce clothing at rock bottom prices. We are constantly improving the technologies speed, coverage and even the features included. $4 a month is a ridiculous price to have access to something that will save you hours upon hours of your time. So ludicrous in-fact that we are looking to revise the entire offer soon! So take advantage of it while we have a blind eye and guarantee yourself grandfathered into the future setup. If you've read this far clearly you love KURB, so even if you hate the offer please consider signing up to help us sustain the project. Or at the very least help spread the good word of KURB!