Making it easier for brands to offer resale services 

A technology platform helps companies to build circularity into their business

Spotted: Clothing resale continues to grow, with industry analysis commissioned by online secondhand fashion retailer ThredUp predicting a global market value for secondhand clothing of $350 billion by 2027. The problem facing the industry is that most secondhand retailers are losing money. The manual labour required to process the clothing is incredibly time-intensive. 

Indian company Relove’s resale platform is helping bring profitability back into the market. Brands use Relove to provide customers with an integrated resell option on the company site, thereby creating internal circularity. A peer-to-peer marketplace, Relove takes much of the administrative burden away from sellers. Items are verified by Relove before being listed for sale, and once a sale has been agreed, Relove drops packaging off for the seller and then later collects the packaged item. 

The platform’s technology provides the price for each secondhand item, taking the guesswork out of the process for both buyer and seller. The algorithm factors in age of the product, its condition, local resale market, and other considerations. Sellers can accept the money or opt to accept store credit instead. Relove finds that 55 per cent of sellers opt for store credit and that brands earn 12 to 22 per cent return on ad spend when customers spend that credit.  

As well as resale, Relove helps brand build significant volumes of circularity into their business processes. The Rescue app helps reduce warehouse waste by listing damaged inventory for sale. Many of the items have only minor defects and are still wearable. For items nearing the end of their lifecycle, Relove provides brands with a bespoke takeback programme. Called Retake, the programme is customised to meet the specific needs of each brand.  

Making fashion resale more efficient and therefore more sustainable is the focus of a number of innovations in Springwise’s library, including reusing packaging for all sales and using QR codes to make it quicker to list items for sale on social media.  

Written By: Keely Khoury