A way for the Spanish clothing giant Inditex to reduce its waste, increase the lifespan of its products, and to be able to proclaim itself active in the circular economy. Despite being the leader in fast fashion at the same time.
Pre-Owned arrives in France. Zara’s second-hand platform is expanding its concept after arriving in England in November 2022. From September 7, this section of the fashion brand’s site will be available to customers who log in, allowing them to both to sell, buy, donate or repair clothes.
Inditex, the Spanish giant which owns Zara, achieved more than 32.57 billion euros in turnover in 2022. It now wants to compete with a much smaller player, but with a more sustainable model: Vinted, and its 245 million euros generated last year. He is the gondola head of a market which, meanwhile, is already worth 6 billion euros in France alone.
The concept of second-hand sales is not new, but it is clear that it has been transformed and democratized thanks to Vinted, of Lithuanian origin, which is creating a real reflex, especially among young people. Much more attracted by fast fashion, they have both found with Vinted a way to pay less to complete their wardrobe, but also to reinforce their ecological conscience. In France, Vinted arrived in 2013.
Zara, which is one of the cheapest fast fashion brands, is at the opposite extreme: it is not such an expensive brand, but between January and April 2022, 6850 new product references came to join its shelves. just in the United States. Nothing exemplary, even if one could compare this number to that of Shein, the worst in the matter, with its 315,000 new references over the same period.
The new platform is called Pre-Owned, and comes in addition to a new service to have your clothes repaired, or to donate them to a clothing donation device in each of its stores in France. But in addition to allowing Zara to buy an ecological conscience or to integrate a market just as buoyant as that of new, it will also direct Internet users to return to the main page of the Zara site, failing to have found this he was looking for on the second-hand platform.
Leverage for the main store
Indeed, that the new Pre-Owned platform is integrated into the main site through a sub-category of the domain name is not anecdotal. Like social networks that want you to use their messaging to see you return to the application more frequently, Zara is also using Pre-Owned as a lever so that its customers come more regularly to search the main site, without even asking realize it.
Second-hand clothing is a market where it is necessary to keep up to date with the latest announcements to be able to find the rare pearl. By integrating Pre-Owned into the official new clothing site, Zara will be able to recover all its customers who cannot find their account on the second-hand site, and who will repatriate to the main platform to complete their wardrobe.
As for the ecological objective, Inditex announces that it is giving itself until 2040 to achieve carbon neutrality with a reduction of at least 90% of its emissions. As an intermediate objective, in other words to reduce its carbon impact by 50%, Zara’s parent company is aiming for 2030. A roadmap that corresponds to the “fashion industry charter for climate action”, signed within the framework of COP24.
With a wardrobe renewed 8 times a year according to the organization Moralscore, and clothes made in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Morocco, Turkey, Romania, China, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh , the road will still be long.