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A massive force is reshaping the fashion industry: second-hand clothing. According to a new report, the value of the U.S. second-hand clothing market is projected to triple over the next 10 years, from $ 28 billion in 2019 to $ 80 billion in 2029, in a market In 2019, secondhand clothing expanded 21 times faster than conventional clothing retailing.
Even more transformative is the potential for secondhand clothing to drastically alter the prominence of fast fashion, a business model characterized by cheap, disposable clothing that emerged in the early 2000s, personified by brands such as H&M and Zara. Fast fashion grew exponentially over the next two decades, significantly altering the fashion landscape by producing more clothing, distributing it faster, and encouraging consumers to overstock at low prices.
While fast fashion is expected to continue to grow 20% over the next 10 years, second-hand fashion is set to grow 185%.
As researchers studying clothing consumption and sustainability, we believe that the second-hand clothing trend has the potential to reshape the fashion industry and mitigate the industry’s damaging environmental impact on the planet.
The next big thing
The second hand clothing market is made up of two main categories, second hand stores and resale platforms. But it is the latter that has largely driven the recent boom. Second-hand clothing has long been perceived as worn and contaminated, primarily sought after by treasure hunters or bargain hunters. However, this perception has changed and many consumers now consider second-hand clothing to be of identical or even superior quality to unused clothing. There has also been a trend to “change the fashion”, or buy second-hand clothing and resell it, especially among young consumers.
Thanks to growing consumer demand and new digital platforms such as Tradesy and Poshmark that make it easy to exchange everyday clothing among peers, the digital resale market is fast becoming the next big thing in the fashion industry. .
The second-hand luxury goods market is also important. Retailers like The RealReal or Vestiaire Collective offer a digital marketplace for authenticated luxury shipments, where people buy and sell designer brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès. The market value of this sector reached $ 2 billion in 2019.
The second-hand clothing trend also appears to be driven by affordability, especially now, during the COVID-19 economic crisis. Consumers have not only reduced their consumption of nonessential items like clothing, but are buying more quality clothing rather than cheap, disposable clothing.
For apparel resellers, the ongoing economic contraction combined with increased interest in sustainability has proven to be a winning combination.
More Conscious Consumers?
The fashion industry has long been associated with social and environmental problems, ranging from mistreatment of garment workers to pollution and waste generated from clothing production.
Less than 1% of the materials used to make clothing are currently being recycled to make new clothing, a $ 500 billion annual loss for the fashion industry. The textile industry produces more carbon emissions than the maritime and airline industries combined. And about 20% of water pollution around the world is the result of wastewater from textile production and finishing.
Consumers have become more aware of the ecological impact of garment production and are increasingly demanding that garment companies expand their commitment to sustainability. Buying second-hand clothes could provide consumers with a way to reject the fast-fashion system.
Buying second-hand clothes increases the number of owners an item will have, extending its useful life, something that has been drastically shortened in the age of fast fashion. (Worldwide, in the last 15 years, the average number of times a garment is worn before it is thrown away has decreased by 36%.)
High-quality clothing sold on the second-hand market also retains its value over time, unlike cheaper fast-fashion products. Therefore, buying a high-quality second-hand garment instead of a new one is, in theory, an environmental advantage. But some critics argue that the second-hand market actually encourages overconsumption by expanding access to cheap clothing.
Our latest research supports this possibility. We interviewed young American women who regularly use digital platforms like Poshmark. They saw second-hand clothing as a way to access both cheap products and products that they normally couldn’t afford. They did not see it as an alternative model of consumption or a way to decrease dependence on the production of new clothes.
Whatever the consumer motive, increasing the reuse of clothing is a huge step towards a new normal in the fashion industry, although its potential to address sustainability issues remains to be seen.
Hyejune Park, Assistant Professor of Fashion Marketing, Oklahoma State University and Cosette Marie Joyner Armstrong, Associate Professor of Fashion Marketing, Oklahoma State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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