Inflation and increased prices have both put pressure on consumer spending throughout the year and both are likely to continue through the holiday season. But according to fashion resellers, the pressures that have led to higher prices at retail don’t impact resale.
Because of that, customers may turn to resale this holiday season as an affordable alternative. Both resellers and brands that offer resale are hoping to capitalize on that shift by pushing their resale options ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Queenly, a resale platform that specializes in women’s formalwear, doubled its revenue from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022. Queenly’s head of growth Lacey Nakashima said most sellers on Queenly are selling their dresses for a similar or lower price to what they bought them for two or three years ago. As prices go up, resale prices are much more appealing to consumers, according to Nakashima.
Nakashima said at Queenly, the company’s main marketing pitch around holidays will be to sellers looking for a way to make extra money.
“While we do expect a holiday bump from people shopping for dresses for holiday parties and such, the majority of our pitch will be toward sellers,” Nakashima said.
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Queenly will be focusing its holiday marketing efforts on TikTok – where one of its videos recently saw two million views – and through a referral program where customers get $30 store credit for every new customer they bring in.
The same holiday resale trend is extending to the brands that offer resale as well. Karin Dillie, vp of partnerships at Recurate, Recurate’s brand partner Peak Design, which sells handbags, will be blacking out the regular retail portion of its online store on Black Friday and putting all the attention on its resale option instead. The brand did something similar on Earth Day this year and saw resale sales increase by 600% without any decline in primary sales.
“Peak Design has an option where when you go to buy something new on their site, it also shows the lower price if you bought it pre-owned,” Dillie said. “It lets people who might not be experts on resale see the difference.”
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Dillie said the No. 1 thing that draws people to resale is price, according to surveys Recurate has done. As average apparel prices rise as much as 5% in a month, Dillie said Recurate has “not seen a price change at all across resale.”
“A lot of brands rely heavily on discounting in November and December just to move as many pieces through as they can,” she said. “Secondhand lets brands offer a discount during the holiday season without degrading margins.”
