Making second hand a first resort

I’ve always held the belief that the concept of second-hand is flawed at its core. It is an afterthought. Something which is deemed a nice bonus if a garment lasts long enough. Or if a person can be bothered to sell their items on again. As a result clothes are rarely designed to be worn by more than one person. And their value degrades rapidly over time, particularly as there is little incentive to look after them,

That has begun, slowly, to change as people become more comfortable with buying second-hand clothes, and as tools like Vinted make it easier to do so. But the fundamental concept hasn’t shifted. Secondhand still remains a second class citizen. And it shouldn’t be.

The reason I built a rental company was that I wanted the second, third, fourth uses of a garment to be taken for granted. I wanted to create a model which incentivised brands to design clothes to be worn by multiple users. And which incentivised users to look after them for someone else to have them next. Ultimately, I wanted the value of the garment to be spread across its lifetime, so that its lifetime could be as long as humanly possible. And it works. People take immaculate care of their clothes. The quality of the brands we work with is AMAZING, and garments are, on average, worn by 4 or 5 children before they are retired.

And so now we’ve taken the learnings from rental, and applied them to second-hand clothing. Data from a poll we conducted, of over 2000 parents, reveals that less than 30% of hand-me-downs are being worn and that, while 84% of parents are willing to shop secondhand on peer-to-peer sites, just over a half (51%) are concerned about quality. When we combine this with what we’re being told by our 20,000-strong community about how hard they find it to sell their children’s outgrown clothes, there is a clear need for a more parent-friendly way to buy and sell second-hand childrenswear.  So we’re shaking up second-hand to make it a first resort, not an afterthought.

Every item we sell comes with guaranteed take-back and an upfront trade-in price. Not only does that help people to see value in their clothes into the future, but it makes them think about what will happen next to the garment, before they even wear it. We also make it as easy as possible to return clothing to us so it can be recirculated multiple times - not just once. For buyers, quality and cleanliness are guaranteed, and we stock only the best quality, ethical and sustainable brands. Everything about the way thelittleloop now works is designed to put secondhand on an equal footing with the first purchase of the garment.

To complete the picture we’re also soon to launch our brand-integrated service, where we partner with the best kidswear brands across the UK, enabling them to offer guaranteed take-back and an upfront trade-in price on every NEW purchase on their websites.

We hope you love it as much as we do. Let us know what you think!

thumbnail image credit: Pip and Henry (models wearing thelittleloop clothing)