Every retailer needs a resale program

Every retailer needs a resale program. If you don't have one, you're missing an opportunity in a growing market.

The Opportunity

Resale has grown 21X faster than the retail apparel market over the past three years.

As more resell platforms arrive to market, it changes behavior along with it. Suddenly, resale shopping becomes more of a norm than an exception, and others are out there reselling your goods. Those are sales and behaviors you could be capturing.

Let's do a little experiment. I'm going to search for "secondhand Free People" on the internet and see what comes back.

I find:
2,540 used Free People items on ThredUp
29,433 used Free People items on Tradesy
5,040 used Free People items on Poshmark
229,669 used Free People items on ebay
0 used Free People items on Free People

Ideas for Your Brand

Partnering with Resale Websites

Abercrombie and Fitch recently partnered with ThredUp. Customers can bring in their used clothes in exchange for a gift card. Your brand could partner with a resale website that makes sense for you and your customers, and set up a trade program that makes sense for everyone too. 

Do It Yourself

You could develop a resale protocol and system yourself. While this might take more upfront investment, it allows you to develop something that works best for your brand, customers, and existing systems.

It also allows you to do something different from competitors who might take the easier way out by partnering with existing resale websites. The more you can make your story stand out, the better.

Have Someone Do It for You

There are services that help brands start and maintain resale programs, like Trove.

trove.co

Telling your Resale Story

The introduction of resale to your offerings is an exciting bit of news for your customers, and an opportunity to make it a part of your brand's sustainability story.

Resale can take on many different types of tones. It can be an opportunity for environmentalists, a shopping spree for budgeted shoppers, a connection for wardrobe sharers, a continued story for luxury aficionados. 

What you call your resale program, how you talk about, where, and with whom is just as important as you doing the resale program in the first place. If a luxury shopper thinks a resale program is for budgeted environmentalist then they are never going to shop from it, and it might end up hurting your main brand's image. 

On the flip side, if you ignore sustainability and make it inaccessible, you might rub a shopper who was going to do their shopping spree the wrong way.

Make sure you have someone on your team who can act as a liaison between sustainability, the resale program itself, and your customers.