Ever-trendy in the resale business is the proprietary resale report, and business-to-business resale provider Recurate is ready to reveal its own take.
Launched Monday, Recurate’s resale report aims to offer a revised blueprint for brands that are still resale curious, while throwing some new customer survey data fashion’s way. The survey includes a swath of 1,000 adults in the U.S. and Canada and was conducted in March 2022 by brand and social impact agency BBMG.
While the report validates the age-agnostic view of resale (with 74 percent of shoppers already shopping secondhand), it also captures the money-maker: mass, mid-priced brands (names like J. Crew, Lululemon, Nike and Levi’s) and the faces of modern resale who are flipping and perfecting the art of resale.
Insights include how categories stand up in resale (after mass-market brands comes fast-fashion brands, by demand), reseller demographics and the benefits of branded resale.
“There’s also a benefit to the brand in being able to curb overproduction. “Brands don’t have to overproduce,” Recurate’s vice president of partnerships, Karin Dillie, said in the report. “They can produce knowing any additional demand can be supplemented with resale,” Brands offering re-commerce can avoid deep-discounting items due to excess stock at the end of the season.”
The report also put a pace (and name) to resale lovers. Recurate sectioned off respondents according to certain profiles: re-commerce shoppers (ages 21 to 40, female and suburban earning $30,000 or less), re-commerce sellers (ages 21 to 40, female and urban earning $50,000 to $100,000), the “circulars” (ages 18 to 40, female and urban earning $50,000 to $100,000, including freelancers) and “non-actives” (ages 41-plus, all genders and suburban earning less than $75,000). Recurate said the circulars are “shaping the future of fashion” — finding that 77 percent of these high-earning urbanites are shopping and selling pre-owned apparel at least once every two to three months. Many of them are flipping goods, with 48 percent buying to resell. Some 89 percent of this group would shop branded re-commerce, per the report.
Though the resale service provider emerged onto the scene in 2020, Recurate has been growing steadily. Today, 50 brand partners — including the likes of Steve Madden, Mara Hoffman and Outerknown — are part of Recurate’s stable. Since this time last year, Recurate’s branded partnerships grew 71 percent (from nine brands in August 2021 to 32 brands as of this August) and gross merchandise volume for the second quarter quadrupled, although no metrics were given.