Will shopping secondhand change the fashion industry?

The mar­ket for sec­ond­hand clothes is swift­ly enter­ing the main­stream, with a post-lock­down con­sumer dri­ven by cli­mate, cost and com­mu­ni­ty herald­ing a new era of fash­ion and breed of play­ers.

“Online thrift­ing is a bright spot in the COVID retail slump,” resale plat­form thredUP declared in its 2020 Resale Report, pro­ject­ing the sec­ond­hand fash­ion mar­ket to more than dou­ble to £48.3 bil­lion in the next five years. With­in ten years, it pre­dicts resale will dom­i­nate our wardrobes.

“The coro­n­avirus has shed light on over­con­sump­tion, which has made con­sumers think, ‘What could they sur­vive with?’,” notes Saisangeeth Daswani, head of advi­so­ry for fash­ion and beau­ty in Asia-Pacif­ic at trend ana­lyst Sty­lus. “This will shape not just the resale land­scape, but the broad­er fash­ion indus­try.”

Cli­mate, cost and com­mu­ni­ty are embed­ding pur­chas­ing sec­ond­hand clothes “as a new route to access fash­ion” and inten­si­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion, she says.

“A sus­tain­abil­i­ty mind­set has been brew­ing for some time. We’re also see­ing more con­sumers enter into a dif­fi­cult finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. And there is a huge focus on com­mu­ni­ties, with peo­ple want­i­ng to look with­in their own neigh­bour­hoods to ful­fil what they need.”

Shifting the fast fashion business model

Big brands have been jump­ing on the resale band­wag­on faster than the vol­ume of sec­ond­hand clothes shift­ing. In the Unit­ed States, thredUP has been scoop­ing up deals with icon­ic retail­ers Macy’s, JCPen­ney and Wal­mart.

In the UK, Sel­f­ridges has fol­lowed up part­ner­ships with Depop and Ves­ti­aire Col­lec­tive with its new resale ser­vice Resell­fridges, while H&M Group is rolling out ini­tia­tives with Sell­py, the Swedish resale mar­ket­place it has a major­i­ty stake in.

“Sec­ond­hand is one of the fastest grow­ing busi­ness sec­tors with­in fash­ion and it’s a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty H&M Group wants to be part of, so we are invest­ing in dif­fer­ent mod­els among our brands,” says H&M Group’s Lau­ra Engels.

We believe this type of cir­cu­lar part­ner­ship is key to dri­ving real indus­try change

“New busi­ness mod­els in the areas of rental, repair and recom­merce play just as an impor­tant part as invest­ments in research and devel­op­ment of new recy­cling tech­nolo­gies and mate­ri­als. To sus­tain­ably reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the entire tex­tile indus­try, it’s H&M Group´s goal to make the best pos­si­ble use of lim­it­ed resources and to keep gar­ments in cir­cu­la­tion for a long time.”

How resale partnerships can drive real change

As tra­di­tion­al retail­ers seek to be more rel­e­vant to con­sumers’ chang­ing lives, while mit­i­gat­ing the com­pet­i­tive threat of resale’s growth, the resale part­ner­ship trend is set to boom. “Con­sumers expect brands to help them be more sus­tain­able and empow­er them with more pos­i­tive behav­iours. That’s what they are tap­ping into with these part­ner­ships,” says Daswani.

The suc­cess of design­er mar­ket­place Ves­ti­aire Collective’s part­ner­ship with Sel­f­ridges is open­ing the door to more col­lab­o­ra­tions, reveals co-founder and pres­i­dent Fan­ny Moizant. Ves­ti­aire Collective’s report, The Smart Side of Fash­ion, reveals its shop­pers too are grav­i­tat­ing more towards sus­tain­able brands, such as Stel­la McCart­ney, Gan­ni, Marine Serre, LOQ, Veja and GmbH.

“It’s excit­ing to see cus­tomers respond to desir­able pre-owned fash­ion with­in a tra­di­tion­al retail envi­ron­ment. We believe this type of cir­cu­lar part­ner­ship is key to dri­ving real indus­try change, so we are explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with brands in our glob­al mar­kets,” says Moizant.

Brands such as Eileen Fish­er, renowned for its sus­tain­abil­i­ty prin­ci­ples in a back­lash against fast fash­ion, believe all cloth­ing retail­ers should offer resale, based on how con­sumers have respond­ed to its Renew pro­gramme, which includes resale of its sec­ond­hand clothes plus a chan­nel for repur­posed items.

“We are proud that we take back and process every­thing our­selves. It’s not easy, but it helps us pro­tect our brand and stand behind our goods. We learn so much from touch­ing every piece our­selves,” says Cyn­thia Pow­er, direc­tor of Renew.

Secondhand clothes sellers also held accountable

But resale plat­forms are also set to come under increas­ing pres­sure to demon­strate their sus­tain­abil­i­ty cre­den­tials in the wake of such suc­cess. “As they come up with more solu­tions for peo­ple to receive their items faster, there could be back­lash with peo­ple ask­ing, ‘What are you doing for the envi­ron­ment?’” says Daswani.

Yet Ves­ti­aire Col­lec­tive believes its growth con­tributes to pow­er­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the fash­ion indus­try over­all. Pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of “cir­cu­lar fash­ion” in more mar­kets will fuel its inter­na­tion­al expan­sion across APAC.

“Allow­ing fash­ion lovers to extend the lifes­pan of their pieces and encour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my can reduce waste. Extend­ing the lifes­pan of a gar­ment by just nine months through reselling reduces water and car­bon foot­prints by 20 to 30% and cuts resource costs by 20%,” claims Moizant.

“With the arrival of our chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inclu­siv­i­ty offi­cer, we are work­ing on a series of acti­va­tions that will launch dur­ing the sec­ond half of the year to focus on envi­ron­men­tal and social sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We want to encour­age more peo­ple to join the cir­cu­lar fash­ion move­ment and explore a more sus­tain­able way to enjoy fash­ion.”

How will secondhand fare against fast fashion?

How­ev­er, Daswani is not con­vinced buy­ing sec­ond­hand clothes will out­pace tra­di­tion­al or fast fash­ion, down to the incon­sis­tent nature of both the expe­ri­ence and pric­ing. “The more peo­ple sell fast fash­ion items via resale, the low­er the price. One-of-a-kind pieces can be priced high which sell­ers can jus­ti­fy. That’s what con­sumers are look­ing for: some­thing dif­fer­ent that you can’t just get from the high street. It’s not just about buy­ing through a cheap­er route,” she says.

Andy Mulc­ahy, strat­e­gy and insight direc­tor at UK online retail asso­ci­a­tion IMRG, hints that the rise of resale could be a Tro­jan horse for brands to shift unsold stock, demon­strat­ed by the num­ber of new tags.

Mulc­ahy says true sus­tain­abil­i­ty may not be the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tor for embrac­ing resale, both from a con­sumer and brand stand­point, and won’t be achiev­able until we expe­ri­ence a seis­mic cul­tur­al shift, mak­ing the mar­ket for sec­ond­hand clothes just anoth­er part of the fash­ion ecosys­tem.

“If you want a prop­er­ly sus­tain­able fash­ion indus­try, you have to get peo­ple to buy few­er clothes, that’s what it all comes down to. I don’t see any­body doing that,” he says.

“We don’t have the cul­ture or sys­tem for it. Busi­ness­es are grad­ed on sell­ing more stuff and mak­ing more mon­ey and they’re not going to stop doing that. I don’t see this chang­ing immi­nent­ly.

“Cul­tur­al­ly, we’re still ingrained to have our ‘out­fit of the day’. If celebri­ties moved more to wear­ing the same clothes reg­u­lar­ly and buy­ing less, and were to spread that mes­sage, then we would see more of a shift, but we’re not there yet.”

Shifting the fast fashion business model

How resale partnerships can drive real change

Secondhand clothes sellers also held accountable