Can Fashion Brand Resale Programs Help Reduce New Production?

So when we talk about circular fashion, which is the theme of this season of the podcast, probably the first thing that comes to mind is secondhand.

And it’s no surprise why: secondhand fashion has been growing rapidly with an increasing interest in sustainability and the growing desire for cheap clothes.

The value of the secondhand market is projected to double in the next 5 years according to ThredUP’s 2021 Resale Report. [Quick note: ThredUP is a major player in the resale market themselves, but they did use market data analysis gathered by GlobalData for these numbers.]

So, a decade ago, shopping secondhand fashion pretty much exclusively meant charity shops and thrift stores. But that has changed dramatically in the past years.

Now there’s a new player in the secondhand market: resale.

As you know, now we can buy secondhand fashion from online marketplaces like Poshmark and Depop, somewhat curated thrift stores like ThredUP, or luxury consignment sites like The RealReal.

And this resale subcategory of secondhand has been a major driver for the growth in the secondhand market, in fact resale is expected to grow 11x faster than the broader retail clothing sector according to that same ThredUP report referenced above.

While all types of secondhand have been growing, the resale sector alone quintupled from 2017 to 2021, while charity & thrift grew 25% in that same time period.

To be clear, ALL of these forms of secondhand fashion are valuable and important to a circular and sustainable fashion future. But online resale does have more of an ability to “keep up” so to speak with traditional retail because of the convenience, searchability, and variety of selection.

So, of course with this rapid growth in resale, brands are taking notes and want a piece of this $36 billion secondhand market pie — a pie that is projected to grow to $77 billion by 2025.

And you may have noticed a surge in brands launching their own resale programs, especially in the past couple of years. Also, of course, with growing consumer concerns about the ecological impact of fashion, resale can also appeal to sustainability-minded consumers.

Now, I don’t think that any of this means that sites like Poshmark or Depop will go away. The growing secondhand market should mean that there will be room for a lot of different players and different forms of access. Like the birth of online resale has not meant that charity shops went away — in fact this sector has still been growing, 2020 lockdowns excluded — so I don’t see brand resale programs causing online marketplaces to go away.

As previous guests Aja Barber and Emily Stochl have pointed out: the world has way more than enough clothes.

I think that we need a variety of secondhand fashion options, as different options will appeal to different types of people. Some may love the hunt at thrift stores, some may love the selection on marketplaces, some may love the curated almost retail-like experience through brand resale programs.

So, all of that said, today we are going to explore the brand resale programs in a bit more depth.

For this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Cynthia Power, an expert in brand resale programs. Cynthia currently helps brands build and optimize their resale programs at Recurate, a full-service recommerce partner for brands, whose clients include Mara Hoffman and RE/DONE.

Before that, Cynthia worked as the Director of Eileen Fisher’s take-back and resale program. And as you may know, Eileen Fisher has been a major trailblazer in the brand resale space.

Cynthia is also an avid thrifter and self-proclaimed vintage fanatic herself, so she has a lot of great insight into the secondhand fashion space.

In this episode Cynthia is addressing topics like:

What are the differences between brand-led resale programs vs. third-party platforms like a ThredUP or Depop?

What do the logistics look like for a brand’s resale program? And what are the challenges to getting a resale program off the ground?

And how can brands design for resale from the very beginning?

Cynthia is also addressing some of those big difficult-to-answer and hotly debated topics, like:

How can we start to get fashion to *finally* talk about reducing new production?

And does resale give brands an “excuse” to continue to overproduce since they have a home for that unsold stock?

Let’s dive into this conversation with Cynthia to get the answers to all of these questions, and more.

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Tune in to this episode of the Conscious Style Podcast below, or on your favorite podcast app.

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Links Mentioned

About Cynthia

Cynthia Power currently helps brands build and optimize their resale programs at Recurate, a full-service recommerce partner for brands, whose clients include Mara Hoffman and RE/DONE. Before that, Cynthia worked as the Director of Eileen Fisher’s take-back and resale program.

Cynthia is also an avid thrifter and self-proclaimed vintage fanatic herself, so she has a lot of great insight into the secondhand fashion space.