Derailing Depop: why fashion labels are embracing recommerce

When ath­leisure brand Tala first opened its shop on online fash­ion mar­ket­place Depop in July 2020, its col­lec­tion sold out in min­utes. 

Com­pris­ing only sur­plus stock and sam­ples, all avail­able at a dis­count, the offer­ing was part of the Lon­don firm’s com­mit­ment to keep­ing its prod­ucts out of land­fill, accord­ing to its MD, Mor­gan Fowles. 

“While we take every mea­sure to buy only the required vol­ume of stock to meet demand and to put all non-faulty returns back on sale again, we need­ed to find a way of giv­ing clothes a sec­ond lease of life and a good home,” she says. 

Tala isn’t the only fash­ion busi­ness to have joined the bur­geon­ing sec­ond-hand cloth­ing mar­ket. In April 2021, super­mar­ket chain Asda began sell­ing pre-owned items in stores along­side its George col­lec­tion, while in the same month JD Sports teamed up with Sol­eRe­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Found­ed in 2015, this fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness buys brand­ed appar­el that’s been reject­ed at the fac­to­ry or returned by cus­tomers and resells them through its eBay shopfront. 

It’s all part of a grow­ing appetite in the indus­try to get involved in recom­merce, says Alli­son Som­mer, senior direc­tor of strate­gic ini­tia­tives at The­Re­al­Re­al, an online mar­ket­place for sec­ond-hand lux­u­ry goods that also oper­ates sev­er­al phys­i­cal stores across the US. 

“We saw a sig­nif­i­cant spike in demand from brands and retail­ers last year,” she reports. “From open­ing a ded­i­cat­ed shop to sell pre-loved items in part­ner­ship with Guc­ci to giv­ing new life to pieces lent to celebri­ties by The Vampire’s Wife, we’re dri­ving brands to con­sid­er resale as part of their sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts.”

There’s lit­tle doubt that find­ing a new home for dead­stock is the sus­tain­able thing to do. Dead­stock – fab­rics and gar­ments that have been unused and unsold for sev­er­al months – is a major con­trib­u­tor to waste in the fash­ion indus­try. It’s esti­mat­ed to be worth £85bn. 

But, while Tala is sell­ing one-off items that have been used in pho­to shoots and oth­er pro­mo­tion­al activ­i­ties, is it just a mat­ter of time before oth­er labels start using the same approach to shift new stock while appear­ing to act sus­tain­ably? 

Leaving recommerce open to misuse?

The motives of any fash­ion com­pa­ny that goes down the recom­merce route need to be judged on a “case by case basis”, says Jem­ma Finch, co-founder and CEO of Sto­ries Behind Things, an online retail­er of sus­tain­able appar­el and home­ware.

“With dif­fer­ent brands you can gauge whether they’re doing it for the right rea­sons or just try­ing to jump on the band­wag­on and shift more prod­uct,” she says. 

Tala, for instance, “is inher­ent­ly a sus­tain­able brand that has pushed those cre­den­tials from the start. If a huge lux­u­ry fash­ion brand were to do the same, peo­ple might be a lit­tle more scep­ti­cal.” 

Joe Hearty, asso­ciate cre­ative direc­tor at mar­ket­ing con­sul­tan­cy R/GA Lon­don, agrees. “Any brand that’s very bad for the world won’t be able to flip the nar­ra­tive by doing this one recom­merce ini­tia­tive,” he says.  

In any case, Hearty adds, sell­ing dead­stock on the likes of Depop would be suit­able for only a small num­ber of play­ers. “It’s unlike­ly that a lux­u­ry brand would want to engage in this, as it would invert a dynam­ic that’s dic­tat­ed by per­ceived val­ue and lack of acces­si­bil­i­ty,” he explains. 

The­Re­al­Re­al has put mea­sures in place to reas­sure cus­tomers that the ven­dors in its mar­ket­place are using it for the right rea­sons. “We have sus­tain­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria built into our con­tracts with them, includ­ing one stip­u­lat­ing that the prod­ucts we’re receiv­ing are true over­stock,” Som­mer says. 

Anoth­er online mar­ket for used lux­u­ry goods, Rebelle, has a “tight two-lev­el qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for all B2B part­ners”, accord­ing to its co-founder and CEO, Max Schöne­mann. 

Rebelle will “ensure that a partner’s offer­ing meets our require­ments regard­ing brand, cat­e­go­ry and price”, he says, adding that dead­stock from retail­ers “is not our focus. We do not plan to extend this seg­ment.”

Extracting the real opportunity in sustainability 

Finch has asked numer­ous fash­ion brands to donate dead­stock for a series of clothes-swap­ping events in Lon­don. While they didn’t make mon­ey in doing so, they did at least cut their inven­to­ry costs and free up ware­house space.  

“Look­ing at this with­in the wider trend of anti-con­sump­tion, if you’re try­ing to be more sus­tain­able as a busi­ness, then why not donate your sur­plus stock to char­i­ty, rather than seek­ing to make more mon­ey from your col­lec­tions?” she says. 

Shoshana Kaz­ab is the founder of Kidswear Col­lec­tive, a mar­ket­place for pre-worn children’s clothes that works main­ly with pri­vate sell­ers such as par­ents, social media influ­encers and styl­ists. She believes that recom­merce presents a far big­ger oppor­tu­ni­ty to “extract more use from what’s already there”.

Kaz­ab doesn’t have a prob­lem with brands try­ing to make some mon­ey by shift­ing dead­stock. “After all, if it isn’t bought, it will end up in land­fill. But isn’t the more impor­tant con­cern about not pro­duc­ing as much stock in the first place?”

Hearty echoes her sen­ti­ments. The real­i­ty is that fash­ion needs to be more rad­i­cal if it’s to clean up its “dirty paw­print”, he argues. 

This could even entail dis­cour­ag­ing con­sump­tion. That might seem too much of a stretch for an indus­try based on sell­ing the next big trend, but out­door brand Patag­o­nia already encour­ages its cus­tomers to repair worn items rather than replace them, for instance. 

“At first glance, that sort of deci­sion doesn’t feel like a good one from a busi­ness point of view,” Hearty says. “It would be a bold move, but it is the kind of change we real­ly need.”