{"id":20321,"date":"2013-05-18T08:14:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T13:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20321"},"modified":"2013-05-18T08:15:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T13:15:40","slug":"the-booming-market-in-pre-owned-high-fashion-clothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/18\/the-booming-market-in-pre-owned-high-fashion-clothing\/","title":{"rendered":"The booming market in pre-owned high fashion clothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A market I have to admit I was almost completely ignorant about, but it’s poised to become a very busy, competitive market if it can overcome a few hurdles<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a digital explosion in the market for pre-owned fashion. In the past year, we\u2019ve seen a veritable land grab in the online consignment and resale space with the number of \u201cre-commerce\u201d sites now exceeding 50 \u2014 and many more, no doubt, incubating in Silicon Valley, New York, London and beyond. Several market levels are being addressed: mall\/high street (Threadflip, Tradesy), thrift (LikeTwice, NiftyThrifty), upmarket (TheRealReal), haute vintage (Byronesque) and boutique (ReFashioner, my own company).<\/p>\n

It may seem like these sites are dealing in a mere by-product of the fashion industry. But no, this is the<\/em> product. Everything that\u2019s bought becomes pre-owned. A tidal wave is building and it has the power to undermine or even destroy. Indeed, the stockpile of merchandise is overwhelmingly vast. I did the math in 2009 for ReFashioner\u2019s beta, a luxury fashion swap site: $880 billion trapped in closets. And that\u2019s just high-end womenswear in the US.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

As with flash sales, this inventory is delimited by the retail market. And it\u2019s wayward. The ROI sucks when every SKU is singular and inventory is locked up \u2014 literally \u2014 in houses. And there\u2019s something of a standoff between buyer and seller: the non-professional seller, accustomed to seeing 100 percent mark-ups in the real world, wants top dollar for her career basics and contemporary designer wear, while the buyer wants Zappos-like service, Etsy pricing and Net-a-Porter merchandising. There are other issues too: resistance to higher ticket items without fittings, sketchy return policies, knock-off trading.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more. This merchandise is personal. It\u2019s not just a numbers game, it\u2019s about everything fashion means to us. It\u2019s about honouring the past of the clothes and their place in our lives. If this is going to work, we need to add content and context. Idealistic, maybe. But idealism is how things get changed and idealism can work to the advantage of this category.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Virginia Postrel<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A market I have to admit I was almost completely ignorant about, but it’s poised to become a very busy, competitive market if it can overcome a few hurdles: There\u2019s been a digital explosion in the market for pre-owned fashion. In the past year, we\u2019ve seen a veritable land grab in the online consignment and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25],"tags":[618,58,441],"class_list":["post-20321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","tag-clothing","tag-internet","tag-marketsineverything"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5hL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20323,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions\/20323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}