THE CLOTHES REVOLUTION

SECOND HAND NEWS: ONLINE CLOTHING RESALE IS HERE TO STAY

Many members of Gen Z sour on traditional clothing stores and frown on new items from traditional clothes. They shop at thrift shops for sustainability and cost reasons. Sometimes the only option is the burgeoning online market. But there are Clothing resale sites like ThredUp, RealReal and Poshmark that started growing before the pandemic and will continue to grow. GlobalData study predicted that this shops would grow 11 times faster than ordinary clothing retail. Younger consumers are especially powering the trend. But the bloom is now coming off the rose and online second hand shops’ shares are down because online resale is getting crowded and bigger players are elbowing their way in. After the pandemic, traditional shops have reopened and shoppers prefer the thrill of discovery and rifling through a thrift shop rack which online shops can’t provide. In terms of the low cost that second-hand stores provide, even fast fashion stores like Primark and H&M are a threat: offer cheap clothes and collects old used clothes for recycling. Despite this facts, online resale market is consolidating and maturing rather than flaming out. Fashion is still responsible for 10% of GHG emissions (because of petroleum-based syntethics) and second-hand stores are still a better way to solve sustainability problem but it won’t solve it completely. The ultimate dream is to create a circular market.

The article Second-hand news: online clothing resale is here to stay, written by Brooke Masters, the FT's US Financial editor, highlights the evolving consumer preferences in the fashion industry, driven by sustainability concerns and a shift toward online clothing resale.

Thrifting has been popular amongst teens for some time now, however, the COVID pandemic has made real-time shopping and browsing through items less appealing. Investors have therefore expanded to online clothing resales that have been gaining traction even before the pandemic. Larger players have used this opportunity to resale their own products, where one could turn in one of their used items to gain points and use them later to buy one of their products again. This would create a circular market which would contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and to lowering the carbon footprint of clothing. While this has been an opportunity to lower one's consumption, luxury and fashion brands are looking to capitalize on the online resale market trying to make more profit.

The article emphasized the importance of aligning with environmental goals by turning to the online resale market, which faces the danger of luxury and fashion brands trying to make a profit out of those resales.

CLOTHES WASTE

7,5 million pounds of donated clothes end up at a market in Ghana every week. Ghana’s Kantamanto market is one of the largest used clothes markets in the world located in Accra (capital of Ghana). They handle more than 15 million used clothes every week, that arrive from around the world in shipping containers. About 30.000 people work at the market. They are struggling to make a living from cheap, bad quality fast fashion clothes. More that one third of everything that comes to the market ends as waste in landviles (Old Fadama). The huge dump of clothes is very dangerous because it is a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread malaria and the water spreads cholera. Everything else ends up on the beaches and even in the ocean. People buy bales of clothes for 100-300 dollars and sell them for 16 cents- 1,6 dollars. Bales are getting more expensive, clothes are getting cheaper and worse quality. They need to sew, color and steam the clothes. Most common brands found on the beaches : marks and spencers, h&m, nike, next. The clothes are donated to second shops around the world (goodwill). The ones that don’t get sold are shipped to grading facilities and the ones that are in the worst conditon end up in Kantamanto. Liz Ricketts built the OR foundation to try to recycle clothes. They shread it to use for insulation, furniture and matresses but it doesn’t give a large profit and hire people so they don’t have to work in those dangerous conditions. The root problem is overconsumption, overproduction of fast fashion. One solution would be to make a law for fashion brands to fund clothing recycling, another solution is for consumers to buy less clothes.