Zara enters resale market with pre-owned service
Inditex’s Zara has said it will help UK shoppers resell, repair or donate clothing bought from its stores in a bid to reduce its environmental impact.
The new ‘Pre-owned service’ will allow shoppers to book repairs and donate unwanted clothes. It will also reduce the environmental impact of deliveries by allow people to post packages of items that they wish to return.
The service will launch on 3 November, with a new sales platform launching on its website and app.
Sellers will be able to post pictures of their items on the Zara platform and payments will processed through Stripe.
The UK was specifically chosen as a test market for Zara as it said shoppers here “push us to improve and innovate”.
Paula Ampuero, the head of sustainability at Zara, said: “At this stage, this platform is exclusively conceived as a tool to help customers extend the lifetime of their clothing and take a more circular approach.”
It is understood that the initiative will not be profitable to begin with, however it does put the Spanish retail giant alongside rivals like Asos and H&M, which have both tried to push into the resale and refurbishment market.
Resale — along with rental and repair — have become key parts of the offer for many retailers and brands at all price levels with a number of specialists emerging on the back of this strategic trend. The trend is so important that Selfridges recently said it wants nearly half its interactions with customers to be linked to repair, resale or refills by the start of the next decade.
