The rise of second-hand retail

Vinted, Debop and Facebook Marketplace are all places you can list things for sale, for free. Ebay still has it’s listing fees, and depending on what you’re selling, it may be the place to go but it feels as though whether online or offline, second-hand seems like an ever-improving option. An independent bookshop nearby to where I live has new books on the Ground Floor and Second-hand upstairs for example. I also looked online and in a library recently for books on a particular topic and a second-hand book seller called ‘World of Books’ (online retailer) came up with great results and so I swiftly made a purchase. An enormous box of books arrived within a few days, and it cost less than £20. Oxfam too have their own book-only charity shops. We’ve covered before that Zara, yes the enormous Spanish retail brand from Inditex, has a ‘pre-owned’ site which enforces to me, that their products are actually more valuable due to the fact they are made well enough to have multiple owners and their products on this site look good and are slightly cheaper.

So what does that mean to retail brands on the Great British High Street? For us at Barber, it’s something to explore in your strategy. Retail brands need to put measures in place for their consumers to be more sustainable and thinking about offsetting carbon, reducing waste, environmentally friendly manufacturing processes etc all need to be part of every business strategy but then with the outcomes being communicated effectively through a marketing and retail strategy.

Some examples of initiatives for retail brands to think about;

Recycling points for clothes in-store
Selling pre-owned products
Not making ‘sale items’ look cheap so that customers are more encouraged to buy them
Communicating how your sustainable as a business and brand
Talk about how you offset your carbon
Make it part of your business strategy to sell British products

If you’d like us to think about how your retail brand can deliver initiatives around the second-hand market, please get in touch through our contact page.