The growth in secondhand and the promise of branded resale
As we begin our journey to bring Treet to fruition, I’d like to share a reflection on why we’re setting out to build this company and what we’re hoping to accomplish.
There are so many pressing challenges our world faces, from climate change to political division and poverty, just to name a few. We believe that companies, in addition to governments and individuals, have the power and responsibility to chip away at these issues. If we can do well while doing good, we believe that’s a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.
Inspired by so many for-profit “doing good” companies before us, like Patagonia, Toms, Bombas, and more, we’ve decided to help chip away at climate change and the pollutive waste caused by the fashion industry.
The fashion industry is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gasses worldwide, with an exorbitant amount of waste produced throughout the supply chain. Here are just a few startling facts:
- It takes 2,700 liters of water to produce a single cotton t-shirt, enough water for a person to drink for 900 days. –World Wildlife Fund
- 1 in 2 people are throwing their unwanted clothes straight in the trash. The result? 64% of the 32B garments produced each year end up in landfills. –ThredUp’s 2020 Report
- Fashion generates 4% of the world’s waste each year –Pulse of Fashion Report
- If everyone bought just one used item this year, it would save 449B lbs of waste, 18,700 garbage trucks full! –ThredUp’s 2020 Report
The current fashion industry is, by definition, unsustainable. Fortunately, there’s a rising trend that shows immense promise to help reduce the pressure on the industry: secondhand shopping.
Largely led by Gen Z and Millennials, secondhand shopping is a rising movement that’ll soon grow from “trend” status to commonplace. With the growth in popularity of sites like Poshmark, Depop, ThredUp, and The RealReal, buying secondhand has never been more accessible. In fact, the secondhand market as a whole is growing 25x faster than retail! Consumers are conscious that buying used is a win-win for their wallets and the planet.
Can you imagine a world where all fashion brands fully embraced secondhand shopping? How might this impact our world and our use of natural resources? The rippling effects would be enormous.
Unfortunately, fashion brands aren’t entirely altruistic; they’d have to be incentivized to do so. As you can imagine, encouraging shoppers to buy used items seems contrary to what fashion brands might want. Why would brands promote buying their used items on a third-party site like Poshmark when they don’t benefit? That doesn’t exactly make sense…
Well, we’re helping it make sense. Our mission at Treet is to make secondhand feel firsthand for consumers and brands around the world. We’re making it incredibly easy and profitable for any fashion brand to launch their own fully-branded peer-to-peer resale marketplace. Their customers can buy and sell items from each other in a trusted environment in a way that feels akin to shopping on their main site. Treet handles all of the logistics and customer support while brands share in the profit.
“There is little doubt that buying habits will change after the pandemic, becoming more deliberate, out of both economic necessity and a shift in values. The kind of instant gratification represented by so much of fast fashion increasingly seems simply wasteful.” –NYT
By encouraging their customers to buy/sell on Treet, brands can grow a new revenue stream, gather data to inform future product development, connect to a new customer segment, and most importantly, reduce their carbon footprint to build towards a more sustainable future.
We believe every e-commerce brand will have a resale strategy in the future and we’re excited to be the engine that powers this transition. We have a long journey ahead, but we know it’ll be worth it.
If you’d like to learn more about Treet, feel free to reach out on our website, www.treet.co. We’d love to hear from you.
