The second-hand market — the new eCommerce trend?
What is the second-hand market?
Wikipedia says: “A used good, or second-hand good, is a piece of personal property that is being purchased by or otherwise transferred to a second or later end user.”
Here I’m referring to all the clothes you’ve only worn once, and which remain at the back of your closet or end up used to clean the house. Or that beautiful lamp that you loved in the store but doesn’t fit in your living room at all. Now you can sell everything. And in these times of social distancing, it’s easier to sell online than to wait for the flea market in the closest village.
More and more people are opting to buy second-hand, whether it’s for cheap pleasure or to save the planet. Anything is an opportunity to make good deals! That is why the market for second-hand fashion is predicted to reach $80 billion by 2029.
We have to distinguish the purchase of reconditioned devices such as cell phones from the purchase of the latest luxury suit. The purchase of refurbished items is an equally new and constantly growing process, but I am going to focus on the second-hand purchase in this article.
Before, we used to sell our unused clothes and objects to our family, friends, relatives or at the village flea market or garage sale. Our target was very limited, and we sometimes had little chance of finding buyers. Today, with the progress of the Internet and the circular economy, we can sell to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any price. The circular economy aims at extending the life cycle of products. It is a matter of “sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible”. The goal is to reduce waste as much as possible and creating further value for each product or part of products. In other words, buying second-hand products saves the planet!
If we take the example of Vinted: we have clothes that we don’t wear anymore and we want to sell them, we post them on the Vinted app at the desired price and we can sell them to anyone in Europe. There is even the possibility to sell an item of clothing not for money but for another piece of clothing from the person’s dressing room. We could even say that we are back to the beginnings of trade: bartering but online! Barter 2.0 if you will.
All sectors are affected by this new phenomenon of the sale and purchase of second-hand online from low-end ready-to-wear stores to the big luxury brands as far as clothing is concerned. This trend, previously reserved for the low-end, is now spreading to the luxury market. It is now possible to buy in a few clicks branded clothing at low prices.
On this graph from Statista, we can see that the value of personal luxury goods second-hand marketing has evolved from 2015 to 2020. The market value was 17 billion euros in 2015 for 28 billion euros in 2020.
A generational matter?
Our generation of millennials is opting less and less for ownership of belongings. For example, we see more and more young people opting for long-term car leasing rather than buying: the world changes rapidly around us, and we need to be able to change along with it. For that purpose, we must be able to renew ourselves as much as we want: change of clothing style, car, phone or even home decoration.
Moreover, the new generations are increasingly aware of global warming and the impact of the textile industry on the environment. Buying second-hand clothes allow people to enjoy quality clothes and avoid overproduction of clothes and objects. It also increases the life span and use of any object using the principles of the circular economy.
The PROS and CONS
Where can we find second-hand goods?
We can find second-hand products on different channels. First of all, more and more stores offer second-hand purchases and sales of second-hand products, such as the fripperies that are flourishing in Paris and in the big cities. The following graph shows places and apps most used by the French people in 2018 to buy second-hand products.
But buying second hand has made a real boom and has become an essential part of e-commerce. The best known are Vinted and leboncoin, which allow you to buy anything you want at any price. The e-retail giant Amazon still offers to buy new or used goods, especially books as you can see on the screenshot below.
E-commerce has grown significantly over the past few years but has seen a real rise following the pandemic and the closure of shops in France, which has led all consumers to buy only online. Vestiaire Collective recorded 120% more orders during the first containment, and up to +144% in June. When Leboncoin went from 29 million to 39 million ads online in one year. Vinted saw a 17% increase in the number of items posted online all across Europe.
So, what are you waiting for to sort out your closets?
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
