Vestiaire Collective presents first impact report

Fashion resale platform Vestiaire Collective has unveiled its first impact report revealing that 70 percent of customers believe that shopping on the platform prevents them from buying brand-new items.

The inaugural impact report, created in collaboration with PwC, adds that shopping with Vestiaire Collective saves 90 percent of the environmental cost of a new fashion item, showing that resale platforms can reduce the fashion industry’s impact on the environment.

Vestiaire Collective have also produced an innovative monetised environmental cost figure, described by the resale platform as a “pioneering technique that is relatively new to the fashion industry,” to calculate the cost to the environment. It found that for every second-hand purchase, the environmental cost is 0.39 euros, just one-tenth of the environmental cost of a new purchase.

It also reveals that in emissions terms, each item bought second-hand on Vestiaire Collective saves 17-kilogram CO2 compared to buying a new item, the equivalent to 100 kilometres driven by an average car.

Vestiaire Collective states that resale platforms prevents 70 percent of consumers buying new

Fanny Moizant, co-founder and president at Vestiaire Collective, said in a statement: “It’s extremely encouraging to see the influence that high-end fashion resale platforms like Vestiaire Collective can have in boosting the circular economy.

“We hope that the work we are doing in this area will inspire businesses and consumers alike to embrace the ‘fewer but better’ model, helping to further reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact.”

As part of the report, Vestiaire Collective also surveyed 2,363 consumers from 57 countries and found that the platform’s focus on high-value items encourages consumers to invest in better quality purchases, which can be better resold as they are designed to last. This phenomenon is termed the ‘upscale effect’ by the Boston Consulting Group, which found that 85 percent of preowned buyers participate to reduce overconsumption by trading up fast fashion to fewer, higher-quality, longer-lasting items.

Vestiaire Collective also discovered that its customers were embracing this ‘less but better’ approach to fashion, with just 10 percent of its community using the profits from their second-hand sales to buy new purchases, which it states shows how resale can tackle overconsumption.

The company also suggests that resale is “growing exponentially” and it is expected to double its market share between 2022-2030 from 9 percent to 18 percent. If this growth continues, by 2030 the number of items resold rather than bought new will save the planet an environmental cost of 38 billion euros.

The report also highlights that logistics plays a part in both first and second-hand sales and Vestiaire Collective has committed to reaching a net climate benefit by 2025, without relying on offsetting to do so.

Dounia Wone, chief sustainability and inclusion officer at Vestiaire Collective, added: “Vestiaire Collective’s business model is truly unique. Our role in the sustainability and inclusion team is to provide the right data to support this claim, and to keep challenging ourselves to make improvements - and in turn, keep challenging the industry to transition faster.

“We are wary of the fact that resale still has the potential to contribute to a culture of overconsumption. Therefore, it’s important to us to work with our community to encourage a move away from fast fashion, to ensure we can have the biggest possible impact.”