Transcriber: Omar Khalifa
Reviewer: Dana Sarhan When I was growing up, I never really
cared if something that I wore was secondhand, whether it came
from a thrift store or a garage sale. It was all the same to me. Heck, it would have been used the
moment I put it on as well. It was really this background that made
me so passionate about this industry, and how secondhand peril can change
the way that we see fashion. Today, I want to share with you some of
the problems and innovations going on in this space that I learned myself
through my journey of building a startup. But before I do that, I want
to take a quick poll. How many of us have gone thrifting before
? Well together. Let's go thrifting. As you walk into a thrift store, all
we see is colors everywhere. Racks of clothes. Styles we've
never seen before. It's like a real life Pinterest board. You
never know what you're going to find. And suddenly you stop. Something catches
your eye. It's screaming your name. That was the story of how
I found this jacket. I was wandering around London, and I got
it at a thrift store for just 15 bucks. And as you can see, I wear it quite often. But from vintage jackets to designer
handbags to back to school backpacks, the stigma surrounding second hand
has drastically decreased over the past couple of years. In fact, around three and four of us in this room
right now are willing to buy second hand, and this number is only increasing. Second hand is not only cheaper, but it's seen as a solution
to fashion waste. Every year, around 82 million
tonnes of fashion is dumped. That's the equivalent of an Olympic sized
swimming pool being filled with clothes every minute. And it's for that reason
that those of us that do thrift are proud to be called thrifters. It shows
that we have unique style and it shows that we care. But much of this growth isn't
driven by regular thrifters, but by people who are new
to secondhand shopping. And while they're often willing
to buy second hand, they don't have the thrifting experience. We did over hundreds of
customer interviews, and we found that people are more willing
to buy second hand than we initially thought. We did an experiment. We asked 25 of our friends who
didn't really do thrifting, to send us styles that they wanted to buy. We manually found them alternatives
on second hand marketplaces, and the result? 17 of the 25 ended up
purchasing the ones that we found. 70% people were willing to buy secondhand, but the problem was they didn't know
where to go or who to trust. And it's really this that creates
a massive barrier. And as we go back to that
original statistic, yes, three and four of us in this room
are willing to buy second hand, but only 30% actually do. I learned
a lot through my journey, from fabrics to really business models and
how brands are thinking about resale. But I'll focus on two main problems
in this talk the fragmentation of the inventory and the general lack
of standards in this space. And to illustrate, I want you to think of
the last style that you wanted to buy. Don't worry if you can't think of one.
It's think of my jean jacket. Where would you go buy it? For this jean
jacket. You would know where to go. Probably the local fast fashion place. But as many of us in this room are, we're
students and we're really on a budget. Would you go visit a thrift store? Because one of the best parts about
thrifting is you never know what you're going to find. You never know
where you're going to find. It's really a paradox. It's the same
unpredictability that makes thrifting so fun that also makes it
inaccessible to many. And this problem persists to
a certain degree online. There are dozens of different marketplaces
, and for the new shopper, they're not willing to check all of them. This is an inherent problem second hand because second hand sellers don't
control their inventory. If you're a thrift store, you're
constrained by the donations you get. And if you're a reseller, you're
constrained by what's in your closet. But as a number of sellers only increases,
the fragmentation only gets worse. And for those of us that do thrift, while we often love thrifting because
it's a treasure hunt, well, we often fail to realize is
that we're forced to hunt. But this is only part of the problem
because while the fragmentation of the inventory makes us question
where do we start? It's really the general lack of standards
that makes us question even what a product is. Unlike in
traditional retail, there are no standards in second hand. There's no standard pricing,
there's no standard labels. And what this means is that sellers,
you often have to guess. But this also creates a problem
for buyers online. It means that you should only buy from
trustworthy sellers in person. It means being skeptical about deals
that sound too good to be true. Like that Gucci bag you found at
goodwill for just 25 bucks. God knows if it's real. But
really these problems, the lack of standards and fragmentations of the inventory that
creates significant barriers for new shoppers to enter the space.
Because even for those of us that do thrift while we often call it thrifting
fun we hardly ever call it reliable. For a second. Let's abstract
away from these issues. How do we solve this problem? How do we make second
hand more accessible and more reliable to more people? That
was a question I wanted to find out. and I talked to people. I learned was when we shop, we aren't
actually shopping for new or used. We're simply just shopping. And everyone at different stores
and different shopping habits. And some people were more prone
to impulse buy than others. But the question this led us to was,
how do we make secondhand shopping? Just shopping. And one of the things
we heard over and over again, especially among students, was that one, one of the things that they did
buy secondhand was books. So we looked at why we went to Amazon. When you're shopping for this textbook,
you're shopping for this textbook, not the new one or the used one. And the simple change of making use
version as accessible as new has a drastic difference. According to
independent studies done by companies such as Words Rated, especially
among students, 70% have purchased used over new. But this is only part of the problem
because unlike in books fashion, it's much more difficult to create this
mapping between new and used, and it goes back to a lack of standards. And there's a ton of work in this space
from companies trying to use AI to create this mapping. But the solution can be
much more simple, simply QR codes. In a recent legislation pushed to
the European Union is pushing for just that. The notion of
a digital product passport. The idea is within a single scan you're
able to see product information for examples, materials, carbon footprint
and dozens of brands, especially in the higher end, have already
started implementing this. The idea is to create a digital
catalog of products and standards that last beyond
the first transaction. But I want to revisit the main question. How do we make secondhand more accessible
and more reliable to more people? And while I propose some solutions,
they are far from exhaustive. But I'm incredibly optimistic. We already see brands taking a role, for
example, offering buyback programs. And we also see other brands like
Patagonia creating in-house inventory, allowing you to buy clothes the
same way you buy books. And we also see tech companies
making incredible strides, some being able to to detect counterfeits
within just an image. And as I close, I hope to have given you a
new perspective on secondhand shopping, its problems and some some
of its innovations, because every threat is secondhand. From my jean jacket to your next find, we used together the past and
the possibility of a greener and more inclusive future. Thank you.
