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While second-hand platforms like The RealReal, ThredUp and Depop have taken off in the West, serving to customers scale back their carbon footprint, the Chinese resale market been considerably stunted by fears over counterfeiting, the continuing social standing hooked up to new items and even superstitions round sporting different folks’s garments.
This might be a matter of positioning, in keeping with fashion influencer Xie Xinyan, who has over one million followers on Weibo the place she posts about make-up and classic clothes, amongst a lot else. Low-end thrift shops could also be uncommon in China, however the 24-year-old has witnessed a major soar in the variety of higher-end retailers advertising themselves as “vintage.”
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When Xie started taking an curiosity in classic clothes as a scholar in Nanjing, there have been “barely any” classic shops outdoors megacities like Beijing and Guangzhou, she mentioned in a telephone interview. In the past seven or eight years, nonetheless, they’ve turn out to be more and more fashionable she mentioned, including that “in every major Chinese town there are at least one or two vintage clothing shops.”
Xie attributes a few of this rising curiosity to the affect of Japanese classic tradition. “The Japanese started to embrace the concept of vintage clothing ahead of the Chinese,” she mentioned. “China learned about it from them and through gradual cultural exchange. Some people started bringing items from Japan to China, and then more and more people started to adopt the style.”
Instead, Xie mentioned, folks at the moment are “mostly worried about hygiene.”
“My parents always questioned why I bought vintage clothes, because they’re not cheap at all — you could buy something new with the money you spend on a vintage piece,” she mentioned. My mother would all the time ask why I did not purchase new gadgets that have been extra ‘clear and hygienic.'”
Taste for luxury
Louis Vuitton luxurious luggage sit on cabinets in the live-streaming room at Ponhu Luxury, one in every of a rising variety of second-hand luxurious items platforms in China. Credit: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Hoping to change that is Austin Zhu, who co-founded the consignment platform Zhi Er (which translates to “Only Two”) in 2016. Billing itself as China’s equivalent to The RealReal, the company photographs luxury items at its Shanghai warehouse before listing them on its platform and taking a 15% cut on each sale.
“Italian manufacturers are the most well-liked on our platform,” Zhu said on a video call. “But US manufacturers like Coach and Michael Kors are additionally very talked-about as a result of the worth is far decrease than European manufacturers.”
A nonetheless from a promotional video by luxurious resale platform, Zhi Er, exhibits an authenticator inspecting a consigned purse. Credit: Zhi Er
Being able to trust expensive and high-quality goods is the “first step in Chinese folks accepting the thought of shopping for second-hand,” said Zhu. “It could also be that, later, we now have (cheaper) clothes classes, like how ThredUp in the United States additionally has Zara and H&M, however that is the second step in China.
“In our first year, we also tried focusing on those fast-fashion brands, but we changed (direction),” he added, saying that there merely wasn’t sufficient demand for low-priced items to make the technique viable.
Motivations for change
Just as resale platforms in the West are powered by Generation-Z and millennial customers, China’s upwardly cellular “balinghou” and “jiulinghou” (the post-80s and -90s generations) seem like driving the posh resale market. The clothes rental sector can also be focusing on these youthful customers, mentioned Liu Mengyuan, founder and CEO of Beijing-based subscription service YCloset.
Founded in 2015 and now reporting greater than 15 million customers, YCloset, permits subscribers to hire as much as 5 gadgets of clothes or equipment a month. After making an attempt them out, customers — who pay a flat subscription cost of 499 yuan ($72) a month — then have the chance to purchase the gadgets outright or just return them.
A scene from YCloset’s facility the place luxurious gadgets are cleaned and ready for rental. Credit: YCloset
As properly as serving to scale back the consumption of latest gadgets, Liu mentioned that YCloset makes use of canvas luggage, not plastic ones, to ship and obtain clothes — and that 80% of the water used to scrub its clothes is recycled. But environmental issues are usually not amongst her prospects’ high priorities.
“I think there are three reasons why our users choose to rent,” Liu mentioned in a telephone interview. “One, increasing the diversity of their clothing choices; two, sparing them from the trouble of packing clothes (when moving or traveling); and three, freeing up space in their wardrobes.”
While Zhu doesn’t have comparative knowledge for Zhi Er, he’s candid about his prospects’ fundamental incentive: affordability. Items usually promote on the platform for 10% to 30% cheaper than their unique retail value.
“I think people have concerns about the environment, but I don’t think it’s the main reason people use resale apps or look to the second-hand market,” he mentioned.
“Coronavirus means that it’s not that easy for people to get what they want,” Zhu mentioned, including: “It’s getting harder and harder to buy branded stuff overseas, so people are trying to find a way (to do so) in mainland China — and the second-hand market is one of the best options for those people.”
Shoppers’ incentives for purchasing second-hand gadgets is, arguably, immaterial, if the web result’s the lowered manufacturing and demand for brand spanking new clothes. Nonetheless, fashion influencer Xie is extra upbeat about classic customers’ — and her personal — motivations.
“One of the key reasons why people wear vintage clothing is because it’s recycled and environmentally friendly,” she mentioned. “When I was younger, I would never think about a clothing’s longevity. It was only about style. But now I think of how much wear I can get out of a piece before buying it.”
Top picture: Luxury clothes pictured on the storage facility of Chinese luxurious rental service, YCloset.
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