©Svittlana via Canva.com
Zara recently expanded its second-hand platform, Pre-Owned, to 14 European countries, including its home market of Spain.
The program, launched in the U.K. in November 2022 and in France in September 2023, offers garment repair services for Zara items, an online buying and selling space for pre-owned Zara merchandise from past seasons, and a donation option. The initiative is part of Zara’s parent company Inditex’s goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.
A number of retailers in recent years have been dabbling with rental, resale, and repair as the industry faces criticism over its high carbon footprint and shoppers demand more environmentally sustainable or “circular” options that enable reuse or recycling of resources.
In the U.S., Patagonia in 2017 launched Worn Wear, a resale business offering store credit in exchange for used Patagonia products in decent condition. The items are then repaired, buffed up, and resold on the site. In November 2022, Patagonia opened its first permanent Worn Wear store next to a Patagonia location in Chicago’s Fulton Market.
In 2021, Urban Outfitters launched Nuuly Thrift, a peer-to-peer resale marketplace for men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and accessories. Then, in August 2023, Urban Outfitters opened Reclectic, a 40,000-square-foot store at the Philadelphia Mills mall featuring discounted product samples from Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters as well as gently used inventory from Nuuly.
H&M this past March launched “H&M Pre-Loved” in the U.S., becoming the largest retailer under thredUP’s resale-as-a-service platform. Abigail Kammerzell, head of sustainability for H&M North America, said at the time, “We need to take responsibility for the impact fashion has on climate and the environment.”
Gap, J.Crew, Target, Burberry, Neiman Marcus, REI, and The North Face are among a wide range of other predominantly apparel sellers introducing in-house resale programs through partnerships with thredUP, Trove, and The RealReal in recent years. However, many re-commerce initiatives remain in a trial-and-error phase and face challenges in scaling.
A Bloomberg article from June said that although surveys continually show increasing acceptance of second-hand shopping, it’s not enough to support sustainable profitability. Bloomberg wrote, “Getting resale to a place where it’s both bringing in solid sales and slowing production of new goods will require more consumer awareness, deeper involvement from company leadership and improved logistics infrastructure.”
“Revenue for second hand is by definition limited, because essentially companies earn a commission on lower-value products, rather than selling the full-ticket price,” Societe Generale analyst Anne Critchlow recently told the Wall Street Journal. “Second-hand divisions can be marginally helpful for retailers, but I don’t think they are going to become a substantial part of their business over the next few years.”