Friday 5 – What sustainable platforms are retail companies offering?
Fashion is something we all have in common. Whether you’re on the catwalk or walking the street as a postman, we all love to feel comfortable in what we wear.
And like all walks of life, there is a real push towards sustainability in fashion at the moment. We’ve seen reselling platforms like Depop experience significant growth in this regard, but they are far from the only adopters. This week, we take a look at five retail companies that are becoming more circular by hosting their own resale or rental companies.
Urban Outfitters to launch circular fashion platform Nuuly Thrift
This one is for the kids. Urban Outfitters is now set to launch its own reselling platform, Nuuly Thrift, this winter. Active users will be able to purchase and resell not only men and women’s apparel, but also children’s clothes.
Sounds like Depop? Well, it’s slightly different. Sellers will be able to exchange the money made selling on the platform to ‘Nuuly Cash’, which is worth 10 per cent more on the rest of Urban Outfitters sites. This reselling service will join Nuuly rent: Urban Outfitter’s own subscription rental service launched in 2019.
Harrods launches fashion rental service
Want to live the life of luxury but don’t have the wardrobe space? No need to fret!
Harrods has partnered with My Wardrobe HQ, allowing its customers to rent their high-end fashion. As well as sitting on My Wardrobe HQ’s website, it will also be present in the pop-up store at Harrods’ Knightsbridge location.
Huishan Zhang, Rotate, Roksanda and Zimmermann are all available, with customers able to rent from 4 to 14 days and then purchase if they take a permanent fancy. Prices will range from £23 to £400.
Hurr teams up with Depop to offer pre-rented styles
The well known rental company Hurr has leveraged its sales by partnering with Depop, launching ‘The Loop’. The Loop will feature on the Depop site with a large collection of pre-rented items.
Continuing with the theme of Depop’s accessibility and affordable prices, the items in the first release will be 100 designer pieces that could be up to 80 per cent cheaper than retail price. This not only branches out from the vintage market, but also taps into an older audience.
Depop is already one of the biggest sustainability-driven platforms out there. By joining forces with Hurr, The Loop has been introduced to ‘power the circular economy’, according to Retail Gazette.
H&M is set to launch new fashion resale platform Rewear as second-hand market booms
H&M is joining Urban Outfitters in jumping on the booming resale market bandwagon. The Swedish clothing-retail giant announced its new platform, ‘Rewear’, which will allow customers to buy and sell from any brand.
Rewear will include ‘smart solutions’ to help users sell H&M clothes more efficiently, where ’sellers can input the unique product number found on the label of their H&M garment into the Rewear app, giving them access to pictures, descriptions and colours from previous seasons’.
Again, this sounds like more of the same. However, what makes this platform unique from Depop and Urban Outfitters’ approach is that sellers can choose to receive a direct debit payment or credit on an H&M voucher, the latter valued at 20 per cent more on its site.
Charity shops are embracing online
With customers still nervous about entering physical stores, we’ve seen huge boosts of online sales in the past eighteen months. So even charity shops are heading online!
According to this article, items sold online hit an all-time high of 151 per cent in the last six months. Whilst in the winter lockdown (Dec 2020 – April 2021), the average charity shop lost £33,000.
The majority of online charity sales were made through Ebay, where charities didn’t have to pay fees to sell.