Zara launches trade-in, resale, repair and donation service: (false) good idea?

Faced with the thriving second-hand market, many brands offer a second-hand resale service themselves, to avoid being completely excluded. Whether it’s luxury, like Isabel Marant, or premium like Sandro. Now it’s the turn of the fast fashion giants to get started, like Zara. Is this the sign of a repositioning to escape the stigmatizing label of “disposable fashion”? Yes, but not only: what may seem like a good idea also serves, for brands, to establish themselves on the secondary market by injecting the worst dynamics of fast-fashion, and keeping their customers in a form of closed circuit. Enough to embody the ideal of circular fashion, but in a Machiavellian key …

Zara launches its second hand service: stop or still?

As reported Reuters, the Spanish fashion giant will launch its own clothing barter, resale, repair and / or donation service on November 3, 2022, which will initially be available in the UK. This is the first time that a brand of the Inditex group (also behind Bershka, Oysho, Pull & Bear, or even Massimo Dutti) has ventured into the secondary market. The latter is estimated at $ 71.2 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow further significantly, according to a September Future Market Insights report. With this new second-hand service, Zara can therefore position itself in this lively market, while being more aware and committed to eco-responsibility issues.

Have you ever noticed how fresh Zara clothes are already being resold on second-hand fashion platforms like Vinted? So we can easily understand the brand’s interest in integrating this resale process into its business model.

Towards a “fast fashionization” of the second-hand market?

But how many people will really bring their clothes to fix them (must they still be of good enough quality to be worth postponing after repair) and / or give them away? It is a safe bet that this service will be mainly used by Zara. How ? Allowing him to keep, or “retain”, as the marketing jargon dictates, his customers in a form of closed circuit. It’s a bit like: “long live circular fashion, but only here”. A functioning that any brand could appropriate, probably thanks an in-store voucher system (as often happens with the competition) that will encourage them to consume more and more items at home, whether they are first or second hand.

It’s typically the kind of fast-fashion-worthy dynamics that are starting to irrigate the second-hand market, as Élodie Juge deciphered on the Matières Premieres podcast. The engineer and doctor of management sciences, a member of the TREND (S) (Transformation of Retailing Ecosystem (s) & New market Dynamics) industrial chair at the University of Lille analyzes the way in which a worrying “fast fashion” of the second hand.

While Zara is increasingly premium, particularly under the impetus of its new leader Marta Ortega (daughter of founder Amancio Ortega, twelfth fortune in the world in 2021, according to Forbes), it’s a safe bet that the brand will remain a role model for its counterparts and competitors.

Front page photo credit: Screenshot of the Zara eshop.