Our story
You belong on the shelf.
The story of how a gap in retail became a movement, and how 350+ founders found their place on the shelf.
Sahar AliFounder & CEO, celery retail
The story of how a gap in retail became a movement, and how 350+ founders found their place on the shelf.
Since high school I knew I wanted to be part of the retail world, where brands are born and creativity meets commerce. As a woman of color and a daughter of immigrants, I understood early that access isn’t equal. The doors that open easily for some stay firmly closed for others, not because of talent, not because of vision, but because of resources, networks, and proximity to opportunity.
I went on to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, then spent years on the buying and merchandising teams at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. Brand discovery was my favorite part of the job. But the brands making it onto those floors already had teams, budgets, and widespread recognition.
Meanwhile some of my most talented classmates were building handmade, ethical, beautifully crafted products with real artistry.
They were creating things the world deserved to see, but rarely got the chance to. That gap between talent and opportunity stayed with me.
After years in corporate retail I knew the system well enough to know it wasn’t built for everyone. As a first-generation founder and woman of color, the “safe” path had always been the expected one. But I had seen what was possible when the right founders got the right access. So in 2022 I made a decision: to stop working within a system that wasn’t designed for us and start building one that was. Not as a response to a trend. Not as a mission statement. But because I genuinely believed it was the right thing to build and I was the right person to build it.
I believed then and still believe now that physical retail shouldn’t be reserved for the brands that already have everything. The most intentional creators, the ones obsessed with their craft, their community, and their why, deserve a seat at the table too. Even in the digital age, people crave discovery. They want to touch, feel, and connect with the products they buy and the people behind them. That connection is what celery is built on. We exist to give emerging founders access to that moment, without the overhead, the long leases, or the barriers that have always kept them out.
We started with 5 brands in one shared storefront in the Bay Area. Then 15. Then 100. Today over 350 founders have sold through celery and that number keeps growing with every new term. We’ve grown intentionally, listening to our founders, taking feedback seriously, and constantly evolving to meet the real needs of product-based businesses. celery is not a co-op or a craft fair. It’s a real retail infrastructure built to open doors for the next generation of brands. The celery founder is someone passionate about their purpose. Someone who loves branding, community, and design. Intentional about their why, consistent in their execution, and always iterating. They’re not waiting for permission to take up space in retail. They’re here because they’re ready to grow, and we’re here to make sure they do. celery was not built as a DEI initiative. It was not built to respond to a trend or satisfy a metric. It was built by someone who lived the experience of being underestimated, and who refused to let that be the story for the next generation of founders. The majority of brands we support are women-owned, minority-owned, and first-generation founders. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the point.
We coined the term ‘sellery’ to name what we were building: a place where products sell and brands come alive. We traded the ‘s’ for a ‘c’ to honor our vision of co-selling, the idea that founders are stronger when they show up together. In a celery storefront, brands don’t compete. They complement each other. Different products, different stories, one shared space and one shared opportunity to be discovered. The foot traffic, the energy, the community all lift each other up. That’s the power of co-selling. And that’s celery.
celery is building the infrastructure for the next generation of intentional, product-based brands to access physical retail on their own terms. We believe that when the right founders get the right platform, entire communities benefit. More discovery. More connection. More growth. We’re not just opening stores. We’re building a platform that scales with every founder we place, every market we enter, and every door we open. The opportunity is massive. And we’re just getting started.
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