Why Top Brands Are Encouraging Customers to Buy Second-Hand

Much like the items they sell, second-hand shops are nothing new. Since the Salvation Army first opened its doors in 1865, savvy buyers have scoured through thrift stores, hoping to find cheaper versions of expensive goods. But as the fashion industry faces mounting pressure to decrease its environmental impact and reduce the glut of items in the marketplace, luxury and outdoor brands are also embracing “re-commerce.”

Many top companies are turning to resale, repair, and rental models to extend the life of garments, reduce waste, and lower their carbon footprint. Some luxury brands like Rolex are launching their own used goods marketplaces, while others are partnering up with digital second-hand stores. Dozens of prominent brands have joined popular consignment platforms to take part in certifying and selling their used products.

These include Athleta, which started collaborating in 2022 with thredUp to launch a “Preloved” marketplace giving customers store credit for items sold, and Gucci, which launched a microsite in 2020 with authentic-second hand products in partnership with the Real Real, the world’s largest online consignment retailer.

“Luxury brands have learned to understand it as a commercial opportunity, a way to make their businesses have a dimension that is more focused on environmental responsibility than producing new,” says Peter Semple, chief marketing officer at Depop, a second-hand online marketplace with 35 million users.

Semple credits Depop with bringing many of these luxury brands into the fold of the second-hand market. In 2019, the company took over Ralph Lauren’s flagship store in London for a three-month residency, during which users curated vintage pieces from the designer’s past collections. Partnerships with Adidas and Benetton followed.

Other brands are making their products “resale-ready” from birth. For its Spring 2023 line, French fashion house Chloé embedded all of its products with unique identifying serial numbers. Customers ready to resell the items can scan the IDs and automatically list them on Vestiaire Collective, a second-hand digital marketplace. 

“This technology provides traceability throughout the entire product lifecycle—empowering customers to make informed purchasing decisions, offering care and repair instructions and direct resale options, thus extending the lifespan of our products,” the company said in its 2023 year-end review of the impact of the project.

To be sure, these brands are outliers among top luxury labels that have historically prized prestige over sustainability. Many premium brands burn or destroy unused products to control the supply and retain brand value. Yet some luxury brands see the foray into pre-owned products as a way to regain control over the price, quality, and authenticity of their merchandise on the second-hand market. And done correctly, these efforts provide brands with a viable path to decarbonization by reducing consumer demand for new products.

Currently, only 1% of products are recycled back into the fashion industry’s value chain, according to a 2020 McKinsey study. But circular strategies like resale could slash the need for new production by a third and lower annual carbon emissions for premium and outdoor brands by up to 16% by 2040, according to a study conducted by supply chain analysts Worldly last year. Circular business models, including fashion rentals, re-commerce, repair, and refurbishment, could enable the industry to cut around 143 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, according to the McKinsey study.

The efforts could present a significant opportunity to decarbonize one of the world’s dirtiest industries, responsible for up to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than aviation and shipping industries combined, according to the United Nations.

Resale has also proved to be an appealing option for a new generation of consumers increasingly concerned with the environmental impact of the industry and rebelling against ultra-fast fashion. 

Nora Hogerty grew up thrifting with her mom in Wisconsin. The experience taught her a love for fashion and responsible consumption. Today, the 25-year-old public relations agent says 75% of her closet is secondhand, much of it bought online. “There is so much waste and so many clothes,” she says. “People are trying to find excitement in a different kind of shopping.” 

Aemilia Madden, a writer in New York City, received a wedding invite with an all-black dress code earlier this year. She had nothing that fit the bill in her closet and wanted to avoid purchasing a cheap product that would soon head to a landfill. So she snagged an authenticated Tove silk dress on the Real Real for under $200. “Finding things secondhand provides a way to participate in fashion without participating in the same level of fashion waste,” says Madden. “I’m hopeful that participating in the process keeps things out of landfills and limits the production of what is being made.” 

Other brands try incentivizing consumers to care for and repair products before they toss them. Outdoor brands, long known for generous return policies, are now teaching consumers how to fix things themselves. Patagonia launched a series of videos to teach consumers how to repair their zippers and buttons. REI created a care library of articles with instructions on how to clean outdoor gear to extend its life. 

Yet, for these efforts to have a large-scale effect, experts argue that consumers must curb their overall purchases. The fashion industry produces 100 billion garments annually, and consumers buy 60% more clothing today than they did 25 years ago. “If ultimately your business model is still based on increasing the number of products that you put on the market, even if you offer those initiatives, it feels like missing the point because we already know there are too many products on the market,” says Delphine Williot, head of policy at Fashion Revolution, an industry environmental and labor advocacy organization.

Sustainability efforts won’t make a dent if companies are chasing production growth year after year. “If a brand is truly committed to circularity,” she says, “then they are going to push repair and recycle versus growing the amount of products they are going to put on the market.”