Collette Doyle and the Airbnb of Retail Shelf Space

Collette is the Co-Founder of Shelfleet (Techstars 2022), Owner and Founder of Unfold Digital, and President of the Utu Foundation.

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Founders Pack
April 11, 2023

Meet Collette Doyle, an entrepreneurial and marketing mind who is passionate for all things digital. She has over 15 years of experience in Sales, Marketing, and creating successful business teams. She is the Co-Founder of Shelfleet (a Techstars 2022 company), Owner and Founder of Unfold Digital, and President of the Utu Foundation.

The story of Shelfleet starts when Collette was running her digital marketing agency several years ago. She noticed a lot of brands, D2C especially, were struggling to find new audiences and reduce customer acquisition costs due to the increasing costs of digital marketing. At the same time, Collette’s co-founder and longtime friend, Sierra Peña, was working in physical markets, such as setting up farmers markets in Austin. When the two finally came together, they began talking about these problems many businesses were facing. While Collette started doing training with brands, helping them with instagram and facebook ads, Sierra was helping with consignment into retail stores.

One day when the two were talking with one of the retail stores, the owner mentioned how much of a pain consignment was, and questioned why she can’t just rent out her shelf space. Boom. From there the lightbulb went off for Collette and Sierra and they began working on the idea for Shelfleet.

So the two began working with farmer market brands and small boutiques but quickly realized this was not their audience. They then decided to move over to the D2C brands that had around 1-2 million in revenue a year and were serviced based such as yoga studios, spas, coffee shops, and hotel groups.

Now they run Shelfeet together, connecting independent brands to retailers through their shelf rental platform!

In our interview with Collette, she shares her experience with Techstars Austin, the role of community and partnerships in her companies growth, and her advice for other founders. Watch now to learn the story behind Shelfleet, the Airbnb of Retail Shelf Space!