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What You Should Know About Selling Resale Clothing Online

Resale Clothing Industry

Resale – Used clothing is predicted to be worth $64 billion in the next five years. MARKETS IN EMERGING MARKETS – USED CLOTHING It had nothing to do with recycling when I first started buying used clothing.

I was learning about fashion through online forums and browsing the members-only buy-and-sell marketplaces. The more I studied, the keener I became to acquire items from old collections or find bargains on new ones.

I eventually began to track these sites like Poshmark, The Real Real, eBay, and Japanese marketplaces, searching for rare vintage finds.

The Business Of Selling Resale Clothing Online.

Except for a few essentials—socks, underwear, t-shirts, and sometimes jeans—I now buy the bulk of my clothes secondhand. When I first started shopping this way, I had to dig to find what I wanted. The hunt is now simpler than ever.

Over the last decade, at least a half-dozen peer-to-peer fashion marketplaces or full-service consignment shops have emerged online, providing a vast and easily accessible array of used clothing from various brands, models, and price points.

Simultaneously, I’ve realised that buying used is more important than ever: The fashion industry generates massive quantities of waste—nearly 100 million tonnes a year, according to one report (pdf)—and it’s not slowing down.

Fashion labels continue to manufacture apparel to fulfil an appetite for endless innovation that they have helped to develop. This flood of clothing is depleting resources and polluting the climate, causing organisations such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to issue a warning about the environmental implications.

It has become important for the industry to find better ways to reuse existing fabrics, and brands will be able to build new collections entirely from old textiles in the future. However, the point is still a long way off. Before then, the most sustainable garment you will purchase is likely not to be brand new at all.

Strategies For Identifying Emerging Markets In Clothing Resale

Buying clothes was much easier than selling them before the internet. The average person’s choices for selling unwanted objects were clumsy and inefficient in the pre-digital period, with restricted scope. Having a yard sale or spreading your belongings out on the stoop. Maybe you placed an ad in the magazine, or you hauled your products to a consignment shop if one was nearby and interested in what you had.

That’s all changed now. Soon after the launch of sites like eBay and Craigslist in 1995, anyone with a camera and an internet connection could reach hundreds. Eventually, millions of potential buyers, ushering in an era that linked collector groups and casual purchasers alike. By the aughts, eBay, in particular, had become a dominant force in fashion resale. Still, fashion was just one of many categories it offered, and the platform lacked certain features, such as authenticating goods and doing the work of listing pieces. It not only inspired rivals, but it also provided an opportunity for them.

Around 2009 and 2011, an inflexion point happened. ThredUp, Vestiaire Group, Threadflip, Depop, Poshmark, and The RealReal all got their start about this time.

Threadup
Poshmark
The Real Real
eBay is perhaps the most well-known marketplace.

It may be a little overwhelming at first, but if you’re willing to take the time to investigate, it can really help you uncover unique pieces that no one else has or items that didn’t meet your previous specifications.

Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.

How To Find The Right Resale Clothing Online

The secondhand apparel market is expected to develop as well.

A report by ThredUp and GlobalData, resale totalled $5 billion in 2018 and is predicted to grow to $23 billion by 2023.

ThredUp will naturally present a rosy picture of resale, but it isn’t the only one who sees the market’s strength: The compound annual growth rate of resale is projected to be 29 per cent by investment firm Cowen. In a 2019 joint report on the state of fashion, McKinsey and Business of Fashion predicted that one of the top trends this year would be more consumers turning to resale and rental fashion, driven by the affordable prices (especially as luxury continues to rise in price) and the sustainability benefits.

The potential in reselling apparel is so great that brands and retailers such as H&M, Eileen Fisher, and, most recently, Macy’s and JCPenney—both in conjunction with ThredUp—are selling used clothing and encouraging the environmental benefits. “Preowned is really appealing to many consumers, not only because of the price but also because of the sustainability.

Reebonz, a Singapore-based multi-brand retailer, also offers used clothing as well. (Several e-commerce sites, like ThredUp and The RealReal, use sustainability as a key component of their marketing to attract new consumers, whether for altruistic, cynical, or both reasons.)

Since I wasn’t just looking to resell for profit, I was looking to add items to my wardrobe personally. I’m a collector by nature and have an ongoing collection of vintage pieces that I work my way slowly.

I tend to prioritise quality over fashion trends, but I’m also a trend follower. That’s why my resale website, The Cracked Box, has a wide variety of clothing that appeals to people who are more into timeless pieces. When deciding what to resell on a site, consider the following: Does it fit?

Is it in good condition?
Can it be resold?
Is it wearable?
Is it exclusive?

Here are some of my top sites, though the most important thing is to find the right fit for you. Bagzz – I would recommend Bagzz to anyone who wants to buy used clothes.

Resale Clothing Emerging Market - Circular Fashion

New clothes have proliferated in parallel with the emergence of resale options. According to McKinsey, the amount of clothing produced worldwide more than doubled between 2000 and 2014, and the number of garments bought by the average customer each year increased by 60%. Nonetheless, relative to 15 years ago, buyers now wear their clothing for roughly half as long.

This model is essentially the product of a fashion supply chain that specialises in mass-producing clothes at low prices, often at the expense of jobs. Consumers, drawn in by a flood of imagery and information available online, crave constant novelty and increasingly regard clothing as a source of disposable, low-cost entertainment. According to a new survey of 2,002 adults in the United Kingdom conducted by credit card company Barclaycard, nearly one in ten confessed to purchasing clothing solely to take a photo for social media before returning it.

The fashion industry has begun to realise the need for reform. The solution is usually found in a circular economy, which reuses and repurposes existing garments while eliminating waste and virgin resources. It would necessitate several steps, one of which would be the opportunity to repurpose old clothes by separating them down into new materials and manufacturing them into textiles for future garments. Unfortunately, it is not a simple task.

Some polyester and other plastics can be recycled because they can be melted down and spun into new fibres. Brands like Zara, H&M, Adidas, and Nike have now vowed to use more or solely recycled polyester in their products, but much of it comes from reused ocean plastic rather than old garments. (While the procedure is worthwhile, it is unlikely to be sufficient to clean up the plastic in our oceans.) Other materials, such as cotton, the most widely used natural fibre in clothes, are more difficult to recycle.

Cotton is usually recycled by mechanically pulping it to break it down into raw material reused. However, this process chops and shortens the fibres. Cotton fabrics’ strength and softness are determined by the length of the fibres, with longer being better, suggesting that pulping degrades the material’s consistency. Because of this, a lot of recycled cotton is used for items like making rags or stuffing cushions, and clothing Brands that use recycled cotton in clothing are only utilising a small amount of recycled cotton.

There’s also the issue of fibre blends to consider. A lot of clothing nowadays is made from a variety of materials, such as cotton and polyester. To recycle it, you must first isolate the fibres, which is currently not feasible on a large scale.

Conclusion – What You Should Know About Resale Clothing Online Market

There are several limitations to this method of shopping. It means I do most of my shopping online, so it’s not always easy to judge how an item suits or looks in person. This can be a pain, particularly when shopping on peer-to-peer marketplaces without a return policy. (To be safe, double-check the policy of the platform you’re shopping on and the seller.) One issue is the inconsistent sizing from Brand to Brand, so knowing where you size in certain Fashion Labels would be advantageous.

Buying used may not be for all, but there are ways to make things easier:

Learn about some of your favourite brands. When you are familiar with a brand, you will have a better understanding of the style, the quality of the fabrics, and whether the clothes will suit you. It becomes much easier if an item would work for you if it is from a brand you are unfamiliar with.

Understand the measurements. Measure some clothes that you already own and that suit you well. Measure the width around the shoulders and chest and the sleeves and body’s length, on shirts and jackets, for example. Measure the waist, inseam, and leg opening at the hem of your pants. When you equate these dimensions to those of the item you’re considering online, you’ll get a better understanding of whether it will suit you. It doesn’t guarantee perfection, but it reduces the chances of producing something that doesn’t work.

Just buy when you really need or want something. If you’re shopping without a return policy, the prospect of an item not working may be a strong deterrent against impulse purchases. One good outcome of resale growth is that it is much easier to resell an item that did not work out, but it takes patience, and you may lose money on the offer. So, before making a purchase, carefully consider whether the potential value outweighs the risk.

Of course, there are the tried-and-true purchasing methods, such as independent thrift stores and consignment shops. There are numerous options for shopping this way.

Buying used isn’t a panacea for fashion’s environmental issues. The industry must find new ways to recycle fabric and increase the amount of resale. It also needs to adopt more sustainable fabrics, increase the longevity of clothes, train designers to make sustainability an integral part of the design, and shift the throwaway culture. (That last one holds brand profits high while contradicting most of the messages customers are bombarded with, so don’t hold your breath.)

Even, it’s a step in the right direction, and the time is right for it to expand. According to a May study from the advocacy group Fashion For Good, re-commerce “appears to be the most financially appealing” of the circular-economy models that brands may implement into their operations. Even with how popular resale has become, recent surveys from financial services firm Raymond James and retail intelligence firm Coresight Research reveal that many shoppers have yet to learn some of the top recommerce sites. They serve a sizable, untapped market.

Ultimately, the intention should be for people to wear and re-wear clothes until they are worn out and then recycle them into new pieces. We can’t do the latter at scale yet, but we can get started on the former. The easiest way to avoid seeing clothes as disposable is to stop throwing them away.