To take charge of the Europe’s fragmented resale market, e-commerce retailer Zalando has launched a range of pre-owned clothing,. The retailer collected, curated, quality assured and photographed this collection and is now selling it in Germany and Spain. It also plans to launch the collection in four more countries next month.
The Berlin-headquartered retailer hopes the multi-brand consignment will appeal to customers. The move offers the retailer new lines of revenue as the resale market is expected to more than double in five years to $51 billion by 2023, predicts GlobalData. Prior to this, Zalando experimented with secondhand retail both offline and online for two years. The company operated a pop-up bricks-and-mortar resale store in Berlin last autumn and has been selling womenswear via a separate app called Zalando Wardrobe since 2018.
Zalando’s new range has been carefully curated to appeal to its 34 million strong customer base. It currently sells 20,000 items on the site. The company plans to collect inventory directly from its consumer base. Customers will be able to sell 20 items at a time to Zalando, receiving credit on the site or making a donation to charity in return for their contribution for anything the retailer decides to buy.
