Meet Emily Hosie: The REBEL Founder and RBC Start-Up Award Winner Tackling E-Commerce Waste and Winning Big

By Khera Alexander

“I always knew that I wanted to do my own thing, but I didn’t have the idea,” Emily Hosie says. “I had no idea that it would be a tech company.”

As the founder of REBEL (formerly Rebelstork), a rapidly growing consumer tech company tackling the retail returns crisis, Emily has built her success on determination, passion, and a strong foundation in off-price retail — an industry that continues to energize her. The “returns crisis” refers to the growing environmental and economic impact of unsold, returned goods — much of which ends up in landfills, even when the products are still perfectly usable.

Early Signs of Passion and Purpose

Emily hadn’t originally planned to build her career in retail. While studying sociology at Queen’s University, volunteering for a charity fashion show helped her reevaluate her interests and career direction.

“I was the stylist, and I spent every waking moment doing it,” she says. “I thought, if I’m willing to put this much time and passion into this [fashion show] unpaid, this should be the career that I go into.”

She landed an entry-level role at Holt Renfrew as a buyer’s assistant. Over the years, she worked her way up to become a trend buyer and was later recruited to New York in a similar role.

A Career in Value-Driven Retail

Her love for fashion evolved into a deep passion for off-price retail, discount channels, and value-driven merchandising. During her tenure as VP of Merchandising for Saks Fifth Avenue and Divisional Vice-President of Merchandising at the TJX Companies, she became immersed in providing customers with access to premium products at more affordable prices.

That joy in creating value for customers stayed with her. But it was during her pregnancy in 2020 that she began to notice major shifts in both society and the retail industry — many of them accelerated by COVID-19.

“E-commerce was accelerating the returns crisis, and the returns industry kept growing faster than any other vertical — faster than off-price, and faster than discount,” she says. “Then you add COVID-19 to that, where everybody’s shopping online and making returns. It was really the start of an almost trillion-dollar issue.”

A Problem Too Big to Ignore

In some retail categories, large volumes of returned products were ending up in landfills. But what Emily saw in the baby gear industry was even more alarming.

“100 per cent of that product was going directly into landfills,” she says.

Much of it was fully functional — open-box or returned, but never used. Emily knew she could make a difference, reducing environmental waste while still doing what she loved: delivering value.

“I knew that this product was desirable,” she states. “Returns are in-demand items, and it’s a shame that the population isn’t getting access to this product, especially with inflation and the rising cost of living. We’re throwing 9.5 billion pounds of perfectly good, never-used, simply returned items into landfills.”

Launching REBEL: A Smart Solution for Returns

Her answer was to launch REBEL in 2020: a B-Corporation-certified re-commerce platform for overstock and open-box returns. Growing 300% year over year, REBEL uses Smart Pricing Technology — an AI-powered algorithm that assesses real-time market data to price items fairly and competitively. All items are quality-checked, and deals can be up to 50 per cent off.

With over 3 million new and expecting parents visiting the REBEL platform each month, the company diverts more than 25 million pounds of product from landfills annually.

The baby category, however, was just the beginning.

“We started in this vertical knowing that if we could build the technology to handle returns at scale, we could expand it into other verticals,” Emily explains. “At the end of the day, baby gear is just one issue in the returns problem.”

Expanding the Impact

Recently, REBEL secured $18 million in Series A funding. Emily is energized by what the investment has enabled.

In November 2024, the company launched into the home goods vertical in the U.S., with plans to expand into Canada and beyond.

“We’ve been able to grow our team and expand into the home vertical,” she says. “We just opened up a 300,000-square-foot facility in North Carolina — that’s the size of three Costcos. It’s allowed us to onboard even more mass retailers and continue to accelerate our growth.”

As the only venture-backed re-commerce platform for overstock and returns, REBEL is setting a new standard in retail logistics and environmental impact.

An Award That Affirms the Vision

Emily’s recognition with the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Start-Up Award is a powerful nod to that impact.

“It’s a rigorous application, but to me, that means the award is even more special,” she says. “Anytime there’s an opportunity to shine a light on Canadian female entrepreneurs, I think it’s extraordinarily important. I’m honoured to be part of that community.”

She was hopeful but didn’t expect to win. When her name was called, it was a moment of affirmation — not just for her, but for the team.

“The night of the awards, my mom came, our team was there — it was exciting,” she says. “I’m just the ambassador of the company. We’ve got 40-something employees, and everyone is working so hard. So it didn’t feel like a win for me; it was a win for the team. We’re so motivated to keep going and keep making an impact.”