With Increasing Resale Options, Brands Need To Be Smart About Where To Start
With Increasing Resale Options, Brands Need To Be Smart About Where To Start
6 MINS READ
Key Takeaways
No matter where brands start, resale will ultimately need to be core to the brand and make up a relevant portion of retail growth and profit.
With an increasing set of available options, brands need to determine the right starting point to build toward scalable programs that best serve their customers.
All brands will participate directly in resale, the only question is ‘how’. So it’s not surprising that we see a wide range of resale experimentation among brands. This past week, Maje launched ‘Seconde Main’ accompanied by a film series showing far more integration with the brand, and Sourcing Journal covered 7 For All Mankind’s panel discussion with Recurate on storefront integration.
Chain Store Age shared DICK’S Sporting Goods expansion announcement of its partnership with SidelineSwap including 50 trade-in events in stores by the end of the year. The model is a hybrid of in-store trade-in events and peer-to-peer online selling. In addition, The North Face, a VF Company launched an in-store trade-in program where customers receive a $10 credit for items brought to a store.
These programs show the number of ways brands are experimenting with various starting points to launch branded resale programs. Ultimately, successful brands will build organizational support with a path toward scalable programs well integrated into existing commerce channels. As a point of reference, REI sold over a million used items in 2021. This is 1,000X more scale than most recent branded programs with items in the hundreds.
As more brands are moving into resale themselves, marketplaces such as Grailed, recently acquired by GOAT, are expanding into new categories to capture as much of the resale growth as possible. Marketplaces have pioneered resale capturing the value of branded items in the secondary market. There will be winners in this new retail category and before then, additional consolidation. However, the lion’s share of growth will come directly from brands and the B2B players who support them.
WWD interviewed Jake Disraeli, founder of Treet who secured $3.5M of additional funding this past week, bringing the total raised to $6M. Congratulations Jake and team. This funding keeps Treet in the race with other peer-to-peer offerings including SidelineSwap, Recurate, and Achieve. Peer-to-peer models can be easier to launch for brands but require customer adoption for both buyers and sellers for scale.
As direct brand resale grows so will the relevance of those supporting brands and the financing of these models. For brands, this expanded set of options and offerings makes it increasingly important to identify the best starting point toward a longer-term profitable growth strategy.
Until Next Week,
Andy Ruben | Founder & Exec Chair of Trove
Week of November 8th Resources:
Bottega Veneta To Offer Lifetime Warranty On Handbags
Bottega Veneta wants shoppers to think of its handbags as investment pieces. The Italian luxury brand is launching a new service called “Certificate of Craft” that gives customers a lifetime assurance warranty on their Bottega bags, ensuring that their handbags are built to last.
Rise Of The Resale Business In The Retail World
The secondhand clothing business has become a mainstream part of the fashion world. More and more brands are taking part in the resale segment of the industry. According to Statista, “In 2021, the global market value of secondhand and resale apparel was estimated to be worth $96 billion U.S. dollars.”
7 FOR ALL MANKIND AND RECURATE RUMINATE ON RESALE
7FAM’s launched a resale section on its website emphasizing resale is part of the label’s three-pillared sustainability plan of “Materials, Manufacturing and Mankind” that stresses environmentally friendliness and fair labor practices. Heather Mee, chief marketing officer at Delta Galil Premium Brands, the parent company of 7 For All Mankind said “The ideal state and where we’re heading towards finding is an innovative approach where you can buy new 7 for All Mankind with vintage 7 for All Mankind all in the same cart experience,” she added.
Maje launches ‘Seconde Main’ resale service
maje, the French premium ready-to-wear label founded in 1998 by Judith Milgrom, is launching in the second-hand fashion market. On Wednesday, October 26, the label owned by the SMCP group (alongside Sandro, Claudie Pierlot and Fursac) announced the roll-out of its new resale service, simply called ‘Seconde Main’ (French for ‘second-hand’).
The North Face launches in-store resale
Outerwear brand The North Face has launched ‘Renewed Take Back’, a new in-store resale initiative through which customers across the US and Canada will be able to return unwanted items for credit.
Grailed introduces womenswear to marketplace
Online fashion resale marketplace Grailed announced it is adding women’s pieces to its platform, kicking off the womenswear launch with a campaign featuring its latest women’s offerings for fall.
Shein’s Fast-Fashion Waste Problem Won’t Be Fixed by Resale
The hugely popular Chinese online retailer’s new business to recirculate its ultra-cheap clothing isn’t likely to appeal to many customers. Allegations of labor abuses, environmental destruction, copyright theft — all of these and more have been leveled against Shein, the outrageously successful fast-fashion company that has seduced young consumers with its ultra-cheap apparel.
Shein’s Resale Partner Treet Raises $3.5M
On Wednesday, resale provider Treet announced a $3.5 million seed round led by First Round Capital. This brings the start-up’s total funding up to $6.4 million. Treet partners with fashion brands like Shein, Dôen and Boyish, among others to create branded resale experiences.
Dick’s Sporting Goods invests in resale marketplace
The nation’s largest sporting goods retailer is making a strategic investment into SidelineSwap, a platform for buying and selling new and used sporting goods. The unspecified investment builds upon a partnership the two companies initially launched in August 2022.
74% of Millennials Would Like Pre-Owned Gifts — Here’s How Resale Can Flourish During the Holidays
Younger shoppers are no longer afraid of secondhand gifting —67% of millennials said they would be likely to give a pre-owned item as a gift, according to data from Trove. An even higher number, 74% of millennials said they would like to receive a pre-owned gift — just one sign that the potential for resale to become a regular destination for holiday shopping is even greater than many people realize.
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