With the world becoming more and more sustainable and eco-friendly, relevant trends appear to take hold of human society, at least partially, for the past decade or so. Many brands, from small businesses to large transnational corporations, all attempt to recycle, use green resources, or reuse goods to cut down production and transportation costs not only for themselves but also for our planet. This led to the rise of such things as circular economy and recommerce. Both can become extremely useful and effective tools if approached appropriately by fashion brands.
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Many fashion brands have apparently started following the trend of sustainable business, involving themselves in more and more aspects every year. As the subject of stores repurchasing their clothes back from the customers and then using the materials to create new pieces was actively discussed just 2 years ago, today brands talk about reselling their customers’ clothes along with their own products, both old and new. And this is not only about brands diversifying their selling capabilities by opening the “second-hand sections” in their stores but also about how this tool can be practically used to increase the brands’ relevance, improve reputation, and aggregate additional revenue while staying trendy.
The Ideas and Benefits Behind Recommerce and Circular Economy
One of the basic principles of any sustainable economy or business, in particular, is reducing waste as much as possible. For the fashion industry, such a task is extremely challenging as, unbeknownst to some, clothing production and distribution produce quite a lot of waste and carbon dioxide output, the combining effect of which is simply too harmful to ignore. That is why fashion brands and producers attempt to use all possible channels of sustainability as they might get restricted or limited in the future. This is how recommerce and circular economy terms came to life.
Essentially, a circular economy is an economic model, in which a produced object turns into waste after as much time as possible. This product can be recycled, reused for another purpose, or simply sold to another user. In this regard, recommerce is a tool to manage and control such an economy by creating platforms that would help users resell their goods bought from a particular brand.
The fashion industry is, perhaps, a perfect niche for circular economy and recommerce as people are generally used to second-hand stores, with many younger users even preferring them or otherwise environmentally sustainable ventures. At the same time, following the model of circular economy can be beneficial to all fashion brands, big and small due, for a variety of reasons:
- Perfecting the brand’s reputation making it clean and respectable on the global market.
- Widening the audience by involving those who actively support a sustainable economy in particular.
- Controlling production beyond its default lifecycle and doing so even after the product’s realization.
While, in fact, the fashion industry is much more complex, in essence, the benefits listed above only expand as the brand or manufacturer further taps into the circular economy. And it might take some time before the goal of significant waste reduction is reached by any fashion brand in the world, however, making these baby steps is important for the greater goal, nevertheless. So, nearly any brand can start tapping into the circular economy right now by simply involving an additional platform where customers can sell older products to each other with little to no effort.