Sustainable Retail: Emergence of second-hand brands
Welcome to the latest sustainability column that takes a look at what retailing is doing to address the issues in its industry. Much of the ongoing focus will be on fashion but not exclusively.
This month’s column considers the lack of any dedicated second-hand brands in the marketplace and highlights a pioneering player in this space.
We are very pleased to bring this series of columns to you with the much appreciated support of our sponsor Prolog Fulfilment.
We are certainly not short of activity in the area of sustainability and fashion. We are in the midst of an explosion in marketplaces emerging for the buying and selling of second-hand goods, specialist repair services are being adopted by retailers and brand owners, myriad initiatives are being undertaken by brands to use recycled materials, and rental services continue to launch for various clothing categories.
Alongside this we are experiencing a renaissance in charity shops selling second-hand clothing with some outlets focused solely on the clothing category. But what has been lacking to date have been dedicated second-hand brands that use existing clothing items as their base canvas or produce their ranges from dead-stock (new leftover and forgotten) fabric.
Stuart Trevor is addressing this situation with his eponymous brand that has the strapline – ‘a clothing company that doesn’t produce any clothes’ – and he has form, having previously founded the All Saints business. He sources unwanted clothing such as Vietnam War shirts and denim from warehouses around the globe that he says house millions of products that are sold into the trade and can be picked up for modest costs.
These second-hand goods are often damaged, have frayed edges, holes, and are missing components such as buttons. It is Trevor’s objective to bring these items back to life through repairs and embellishments including patches, artworks or adorning them with lacework. He also places his logo on each item and an individual sew-on tag that numbers the items and enhances their unique characteristics.
His ranges also include ‘new’ items for which he has been criticised for going against the brand’s ethos but he argues that these items are created from unused old materials. And they are crafted by artisans in the UK.
Although Trevor believes he can scale his business – helped by the fact that there are so many second-hand items piled up in warehouses looking for a second life – he also believes there is a great opportunity for his activities to impact the behaviour of the big clothing brands.
He is in talks with various brands such as Sunspel and can foresee the day when there are collabs such as ‘North Face x Stuart Trevor’ that would enable the brand owners to use Trevor’s proposition to bring back to life the unsold stock that sits in their warehouses. This can be because it is damaged, end-of-season, or having suffered from errors in production.
There is also the increasing amounts of clothing that has been returned by customers from unwanted online orders, whether it be from wrong sizing or other issues. This is a growing problem for many brands and tying-up with the likes of Stuart Trevor sounds like an opportunity to avoid clothing from going into landfill and businesses to achieve their environmental targets.
Such moves also have an element of cool and he reveals that he has had visits from The Libertines, Blink-182, The 1975 and Massive Attack that are all wanting to be kitted out in sustainable clothing.
It is still very early days for the Stuart Trevor brand but it seems that it might not only play an important role selling its own re-worked items but it will also help highlight that there is an opportunity for other second-hand brands to emerge.
Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider
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