Here’s the service missing to scale circular fashion

My idea for the resale market is akin to someone knocking on the front door of your house and asking you if you’re keen to sell up - does it already exist?

How can we facilitate second hand shopping all the more?

I spend the majority of my time thinking about systems of overproduction and overconsumption; about how we as shoppers have been conditioned to desire excess, how the industry functions on oversupply and obsolescence, and about how to redesign and redirect such deeply ingrained business models. 

But, I’m also a shopper, albeit a very minimal one these days. I work in fashion, and have done for nearly 20 years, because I love it. While I don’t buy like I used to - read my reflections on the Rule of 5 campaign here - I still lust after items. Fortunately, I’ve gotten really good at both moderating my desires and focusing on buying either second hand pieces, or at the very least, from as responsible brands as possible. I do the same with kids wear (thank you Vinted). 

From both a work and personal perspective, I can confidently say I know the resale market fairly well. And I really feel like something is missing… 

Because of my unwillingness to now engage with the marketing engine that drives aspiration towards overconsumption, it is very rare that I would ever browse a second hand site or store just for the sake of it. If I engage, it’s with purpose. I know what I want (whether that’s on a ‘needs’ or purely ‘wants’ basis). 

Sometimes that’s generically a pair of black jeans, but on other occasions, it’s as specific as a particular dress or coat, from a particular brand, from a particular year. Resale sites are a dream for this - set yourself an alert and wait. But I can’t help thinking how much of an opportunity there could be in better connecting this idea. 

Here’s my thinking…  

The industry needs a resale service that lets me enter exactly what I’m looking for, then have the brand in question that it’s originally from contact everyone that bought that specific item and ask them if they’re willing to sell it on yet. The pair of shoes you resisted buying and then haven’t stopped thinking about for two year since, are currently sat in someone’s wardrobe never worn.

In fact, in the UK alone, there are a reported 1.6 billion items of unworn clothes in our homes, according to WRAP.

You could think of this idea as like the person that knocks on your door to ask you if you’re willing to sell your house. (It happens!) The answer could be a straight no, but it could also make you stop and think about whether you might actually consider doing just that. In a more basic way, it’s like the Gumtree ‘wanted’ ads.

Figure out the mechanics of this, plus the customer experience (which would appreciably be highly complex, especially at scale), and it could actually make circularity a viable business revenue stream, which for the majority of brands it’s not yet. 

My contemplation on it actually started from discovering a very small, contemporary business with limited runs. Strap in for this somewhat convoluted tale, but it proves a point… I rented a dress of theirs via one of the big rental sites, then wanted to do so again, but the particular person who had loaned it, had disappeared and no where else had it. I contacted the brand directly to ask about the piece as I had seen they still did the same style, but they no longer had the same fabric. This sent me down a path of wondering how I could find the original person and offer to buy it if they didn’t want it any longer. Et voila, here I am. (And I have alerts set in the hope that dress comes up on one of the resale sites one day).

Last year, French fashion house Chloé announced a service facilitated by digital IDs powered by EON that enable buyers to now click and instantly resell an item on Vestiaire Collective. This is just taking that same idea further. If I ask Chloé, could they then ask their customers with those same connected items, on my behalf? Could I ask Vestiaire, who in turn would ask Chloé? It’s not that much of a step beyond what Vestiaire already offers through its consignment service. Of course, those customers will have needed to have opted in from the outset, and it might not be fruitful every time, but I bet it would be so more than we realise.

This also doesn’t have to be about seasonal product. In fact, there’s a bigger opportunity here in classic transseasonal pieces (the iconic handbag as an example, the trench coat, the belt) that perhaps you wouldn’t buy brand new because either, like me, you are intentionally more sustainable in your consumption, or indeed because it’s too expensive to do so. Again, another revenue stream - or more to the point, a new customer acquisition tool for your brand.

The sustainability win is that you buy this instead of buying new.

Maybe as the seller there’s an additional incentive attached too - like a discount to buy another item from the brand (more so if it’s also second hand?). A sort of customer service bonus while the brand gets a cut of the sale. And thus customer retention also.

But there’s something else in this as well. A lot of luxury brands today still won’t venture into resale. Perhaps they’ve dabbled with it, but in spite of the most enormous archives, and bucket loads of potential in it, going the full hog is not on the priority list. Partly it’s about logistics and making the business model work, but a lot of it is about brand equity and control. This version then is different - it’s about data and a customer service play more than anything else. Several luxury businesses could be very well placed to already be able to do this - and they could even do it quietly, like a high end VIP service.

I’ve written this through the lens of luxury, but there’s a version of this that also works for more mainstream business. I was talking to someone last week about vintage Topshop, but I can also see relevance for an outdoor brand, even for some specific high street ones today.

Across the board, sustainable fashion has to look like products that have multiples of lives. This needs to not just be about pieces people have gotten fed up with from those who have the time and energy to then think to sell them on, but all the other stock that is sat unused from people who would never have considered doing so if not directly prompted. Imagine how commercialising that could displace linear production and consumption if done at scale?

Perhaps there’s a platform already doing this, and if there is, please tell me.