The Resale Revolution and What it Means for You
Resale shopping has transformed the way we think about fashion and how we shop online. It also creates opportunities for individuals to collect and resell the clothes from their own closets.
Fashion is having its resale moment. According to thredUp’s 2019 Resale Report, the secondhand market is expected to double from $24 billion to $51 billion from 2018 to 2023. It’s putting fast fashion in the dust with 21 times faster growth in three years.
Unicorns in this space include StockX, an online collectible sneaker selling outlet and TheRealReal, offering consignment luxury and designer brands. (They’re not fanciful creatures, but private companies with a valuation of at least a billion dollars). Poshmark, a social peer-to-peer reselling site and thredUp, a brand name reseller, are not far behind.
How did this happen? And where do you fit in?
Influencers took control of style, while conscious shoppers became more and more mainstream. At the intersection of social media influence and sustainability, you land at the perfect solution: resale.
Like social media, reselling is democratic. Pretty much anyone can simultaneously produce and consume fashion online while cultivating a personal style. At the same time, resale doesn’t exploit all of that extra energy, water and labor when you sell things two or three times after they first left the retail sales floor.
Now, it’s a collector’s market and people increasingly view their own closets as boutiques. Meanwhile, the number of items we keep in our closets has fallen. We’re more likely to keep an item circulating in resale-land once we lose interest.
However, in the resale world, user-experience still makes all the difference. Long wait times and clunky sales points won’t cut it.
Ways to werk it
#Shopmycloset
With photo apps like Instagram allowing you to easily upload your closet “inventory” and resell last week’s items, you can easily carve out a niche using the #shopmycloset hashtag.
Youtube hauls: the gateway between thrift and Depop?
Watch Youtube vlogger Threadsobsessed devour the racks on her thrift hauls. She takes a maximalist approach to buying and selling. There’s something strangely addictive about watching her pull, ponder and put back things that you could buy on her Depop reseller account. Do you enjoy the hunt? Could this be you?
You can subscribe, buy in bulk and splurge guilt-free
You don’t have to cut back to be sustainable with second-hand clothes. Many online sites help match your style and send multiples, giving you low hassle options. And We Evolve creates subscription boxes to receive new clothes monthly based on your style. We (Goodfair) also offer curated bundles, so you can easily rotate patterns and styles.
We can now own less and circulate the rest
Let us know how you navigate the wide world of resale in the comments.
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Remember that resale is social. Wear, like and share your Goodfair finds with friends--both online and IRL.
Article Written by Erica Eller