Recycling, Retail, and Rapid Pivots: The RAREFORM Growth Playbook With Alec Avedissian

Alec Avedissian is the Co-founder and CEO of RAREFORM, an innovative brand that recycles vinyl billboards into one-of-a-kind bags, backpacks, and accessories. With over a decade of experience in entrepreneurship, Alec has led RAREFORM from its roots as a surf bag company to a thriving eight-figure ecommerce business, recycling 80% of billboard materials in the US. He is passionate about sustainability, creative product design, and building purpose-driven brands that adapt to market needs.

 In this episode…

Pivoting too late can be fatal, and moving too fast can derail a growing brand. For ecommerce founders, knowing when and how to shift product lines or business models is a constant challenge — especially at scale. How can established brands embrace strategic pivots without alienating customers or sacrificing momentum?

For Alec Avedissian, an expert in sustainable product development and vertical brand growth, tuning into market signals helped RAREFORM drive major strategic decisions. Alec explains that rather than forcing underperforming products to work, brands must lean into data, customer behavior, and gut instinct to identify scalable opportunities. He also reveals how building multiple business segments — including B2C, B2B, and recycling services — enabled the brand’s diversification and resilience. Product iterations, he emphasizes, should be informed by timeless design trends while remaining flexible to let go of what doesn’t work.

In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Alec Avedissian, Co-founder and CEO of RAREFORM, about the art of timely pivots in ecommerce. Alec discusses how diversifying revenue streams sustains growth, the importance of knowing when to abandon a product, and why timeless design outweighs trend-chasing. He also delves into gut instinct in leadership, business evolution over revolution, and the lessons he’d apply if starting over.