Why more and more big brands are getting into the second-hand market

Thrift stores and ready-to-wear consignment-sale platforms like Vinted have literally been a hit after confinement. According to the Natixis Payments Observatory, the number of purchases of second-hand items increased by 140% from 2019 to 2021, all channels combined. Sandro, Petit Bateau, Aigle, Ba&sh, Bocage, Balzac, le Slip Français and even luxury with Isabel Marant: more and more of them are offering their customers a second-hand service, by offering to bring back items for a voucher of purchase. 20 minutes takes you into the back room, even into offices, to better understand brands’ ambitions.

“Fashion is often questioned about its too strong environmental impact”, observes Pierre-François Le Loët, president of the French Federation of women’s ready-to-wear. This is why major French brands want to give a second wind to clothes that have already been worn. This is also how Aigle, a brand of boots, shoes and ready-to-wear, named its second-hand website, launched in October 2020. Nadine Cottet is the marketing director of the brand. For her, it was “a fairly natural path, for a brand that has been committed since its creation and which sells sustainable products”. The goal ? “Raise consumer awareness of new consumption patterns”.

“The second hand, you have to go”

“Too many clothes are sleeping in French wardrobes”, according to Pierre-François Le Loët, this is also the case for Petit Bateau products. Delphine Lebas is the brand’s CSR director. “Sustainability is in Petit Bateau’s DNA,” she says. Working in textiles means taking responsibility and supporting a transformation of the sales model”. It draws a parallel with the arrival of the Internet. “Before, we looked at digital and wondered what it was going to look like. Today, everyone uses it. The second hand is the same, you have to go”. A concept therefore very promising, according to Mathilde Lespets, project manager for innovation and sustainable development at the Fédération de la Maille, de la Lingerie et du Balnéaire. According to her, “the second-hand market will quickly overtake the new clothing market”.

Selling and buying a product that has already lived also means minimizing the impact on the resources that are normally called upon, in particular water, carbon or raw materials. But there is the question of delivery. Indeed, a majority of brands that offer second-hand, do so via an e-shop. Have they found or imagined solutions to soften the impact on the environment? This is a question that arises at Aigle, which defends itself by claiming to work only with Colissimo, “whose carbon footprint is zero”. Nadine Cottet continues by expressing a longer-term wish which would be to “offset transport with Inuk”, a company which promises companies to reduce their carbon emissions thanks to renewable energies. Efforts are more timid at Sandro, which still uses “minimalist packaging with recycled and recyclable cardboard” as well as “delivery to a relay point instead of home delivery”, according to Khalida Chami, CSR director at Sandro.

Ecolo… To the end of the line?

Petit Bateau, which on the other hand offers its second-hand service in three shops, has adopted “downcycling”, that is to say the fact of using the fibers of clothing in the manufacture of insulation for homes. Delphine Lebas also mentions a second eco-responsible process: “One of our real challenges for tomorrow is to close the loop of the circular economy by dismantling our products, transforming them back into fiber, yarn, then into a Petit Bateau product” , called the “textile-to-textile”. She concludes: “We are even involved in the European circular fashion project SCIRT, of which Decathlon is also a part”.

If the brands meet a need of their customers, the second hand has other advantages. “We offer these items to please our customers, to give them a second life and also to make them more accessible to people who don’t necessarily have the means”, reports Nadine Cottet. It is also a guarantee of quality. “This is a real request from our customers, since they are the ones who pass the clothes from hand to hand, from generation to generation, explains Delphine Lebas. They are the ones who tell us that our products have a real lifespan”.

“This is a real request from our customers”

Also aware of the duty to provide the best customer experience through this recent concept, the help of service providers is essential for brands. Both in the quality control of the products reported and in the formalities. Aigle, Le Slip Français, Balzac and Sandro work with Faume, a French company created a year and a half ago. “We trained them on the products, we established specifications with them,” explains Khalida Chami. Freepry, another French company, also created a year and a half ago, “works with Petit Bateau to optimize sales of its second-hand items in stores”, reports Mathilde Lespets, innovation and sustainable development project manager at the Federation. Knitwear, Lingerie and Swimwear.

On the profit side, Pierre-François Le Loët ensures that “everything is not driven by business” and that “brands are not a lot of money”. “They make about 20-25% margin,” he says. Regarding the brands that 20 minutes contacted, it is rather a question of zero margin. Nadine Cottet specifies that this is not a “profitability objective”. As for Khalida Chami, she says her team “does not see it as a source of income in the short term”. On the other hand, if a particular second-hand item sells very well, Le Loët does not rule out that brands may want to make a (larger) margin in the future and that they “increase the second-hand price to the future, and therefore also the price of new”.