Recommerce is now fashionable

As ramps in Milan and New York showcase the next in fashion, personal wardrobes back home are setting standards of their own. Offering hoarders a platform to unload, and bargain-hunters an opportunity to clinch a deal, recommerce platforms have unleashed the latest trend in shopping — ‘Smart Shopping’.

Recommerce is nothing but recommercialising or second-hand selling, a concept that has been around since the dawn of markets themselves. However, from being treated as an option for the financially-challenged, it has now been upgraded to an option for the smart, both financially and environmentally. 

Recommerce involves re-selling items as they become obsolete. But in the dynamic world of fashion, novelty trumps utility. In a globalised economy, where people are exposed to fashion trends that are updated on a daily basis, even brand-new outfits can be rendered obsolete in a matter of days. 

On the other hand, even the ones in trend have limited utility due to the fast-paced nature of fashion. So, arriving at the crux of the problem — affordability — as discouraging as it may be to repeat outfits, to be able to afford new ones remains a challenge. While ‘end of season sales’ and ‘festival sales’ offer much needed relief from time-to-time, seldom do they come from coveted, top-end brands.

Recommerce, therefore, has taken a targeted approach to tackle these issues for India’s fashion-aspired youth. Opening ecommerce platforms for buying and selling pre-owned fashion, online platforms, including Elanic, Envoged and CoutLoot, among others, have put recommerce into perspective. “India, as an economy, has opened up and moved forward culturally. It has become more consumption-driven and technology is fulfilling this drive,” says Elanic Co-founder Abhilash Narahari, adding, “Luxury brands, even at discounted prices, tend to be pretty expensive. Recommerce, is the most suitable proposition for young girls, who would like to invest in them, but are constrained by affordability. On Elanic, the typical buying consumer base is in the ages of 18 to 25 years, which is mostly college-going and living off of allowances.”

CoutLoot Co-founder Jasmeet Thind opines, “Globally, buying and selling of pre-owned fashion items has always been a big market. India is now picking it up.” As India integrates the nitty-gritties of ‘sharing economy’, pre-owned and refurbished are no more taboo concepts in the market. Thind further adds, “With recommerce, fashion is made available at reasonable prices, the whole idea of one wanting to wear something new everyday is accomplished.”

“With recommerce, individuals are able to buy three items for the price of one. The biggest plus-point here is that luxury brands, which are otherwise beyond reach in terms of price, become accessible,” says Anandita Singh, Co-founder, Envoged.

Across various platforms, recommerce offers price discounts from 40% up to even 90%. The industry broadly categorises items into unused, gently used and heavily used products. Some websites, classify them based on whether items have their brand tags on. Further, some even partake in ascertaining the price of the items.

As a marketplace for pre-owned items, recommerce websites more or less support the entire process of taking items from one user’s shelf to another’s, be it concierge, pricing or even dry-cleaning. CoutLoot offers both direct listing, wherein the company takes custody of the product post-sale, as well as concierge services, wherein it takes products into custody as the products are listed and held until the sale is made. While for the former it charges 25% commission, the latter is services at 30% commission on the sale price. Envoged has a flat charge of 20% commission on all its sales, while Elanic maintains it at 10%.

Envoged, which focuses on high-end fashion finds handbags and accessories to be the most popular category followed by apparel and footwear, however, CoutLoot, which is a high-street fashion-focused platform for young college girls, finds apparel to be the most popular category. Elanic, which has opened its platform for categories beyond fashion, finds women’s fashion to be the most popular category on the website. 

Making a case for fashion as a popular category, Narahari says, “Fashion is consumed on a daily basis, and since it is dynamic and trends change frequently, buying and selling in this category is more buoyant compared with other popular recommerce categories such as cars or electronics.” Thind augments the idea, saying, “With shared Olas and Ubers catching on, people are now in the habit of ‘smart’ spending. If a product, which is barely used, is available at less than half its original price, it becomes pragmatic to be ‘recommercing’ for the seller of course, but also the buyer, who is able to make some money from an item that has no utility-value to him/her.”

Numbers, across the industry, seem to justify the same. CoutLoot is averaging at over 100 sales on weekends and about 80 sales on weekdays. The company has completed 5,500 orders over the last five to six months, said Thind. Envoged, which was launched in May 2015, has seen the average ticket-size increase about five times, since then. “When we started off, it was difficult to convince people regarding the recommerce concept. However, the idea of ‘luxury made accessible’ has definitely made ground for itself now,” says Singh. 

Narahari adds, “Technology has played a huge role in shaping up recommerce. Online platforms have created a community of sorts, wherein people can interact and share their wardrobe ideas. It is this sense of community, which I believe is the driving force.”  

As the economy closes in on the heels of the concepts of ‘community’, ‘sharing’ and ‘smart’, a day when affordable fashion merges with luxury fashion, may not be too far. And, till that day arrives, recommerce aspires to remain in style.