Ahh…so it begins. The barrage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails and now SMS appears to be the hallmark of the Holiday season. In the 2000s national chains such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy found a way to take advantage of this timing as a marketing moment to kick off holiday shopping–setting record sales numbers year after year by focusing deals in small time windows or "events."

But times are changing. Glossy reports “Brands are saying goodbye to Black Friday,” due to a shift in customer values. Yes, Black Friday has continued to wane from its heyday but let’s not kid ourselves, the trend has more to do with shifts in the retail landscape than customer values. Black Friday is a marketing event that no longer holds the value it once did for retailers. What has changed is the growth in e-commerce and constant access to deals, making this once-limited event, less effective as a marketing event.

Make no mistake, we are shopping MORE every year, regardless of changing values.
92 million tonnes of textile waste are produced globally every year, according to Punch. But very few people think about where all these textiles go.

The answer: West Africa. The majority of the US and European excess textiles and unwanted clothing is “donated” to African countries and the volume of these imports is mounting to unimaginable levels as stated in Vogue. Today, less than 12% of all fashion waste is recycled with the majority being burned and buried overseas where it is sold, out of sight out of mind. This reality is getting worse with fashion waste increasing by 50% at the end of this decade.
While there are no silver bullets to eliminate the real cost of overproduction, as Impakter points out this week “people purchasing brand new items for every occasion are perpetuating this system – secondhand shopping slows this cycle.” An item sold for the second time most often replaces the sale of a newly made item, hence lessening production as nobody wants to make items that don’t sell. Triple Pundit supported this trend in their coverage of Secondhand Sunday as the latest in retail holidays. In a recent Deloitte study, 48% of retail executives plan to offer resale directly to their customers. While I’m not sure if Secondhand Sunday will become the next Black Friday for retail, every brand should be looking to sell their brand items as many times as possible.

So, given this, should Vestiaire ban fast fashion? This is the question Vogue raised in their article, “Should resale sites ban fast fashion? It’s complicated”. On one hand, the more items we can get additional use out of the better, and on the other hand, fast fashion resale may continue to perpetuate the model. My take… good on Vestiaire for creating a 3-year sustainability strategy, good publicity, and good economics which I respect. However, their ultimate decision won’t matter at all in the world of growing fast fashion–this part is just smart marketing.

Where I really appreciate Vestiaire’s stance is in legislation. As the sustainability crisis escalates, at some point legislation will pass some "tax" on end-of-use. Brands with resale programs will be best equipped to take advantage of this new landscape; the ones yet to address this important area will fall further behind.

The So What
+Brands will inevitably be asked to address production growth as part of their sustainability strategy as legislation intervenes in pervasive fashion waste.
+There is a real cost of fashion and there is no farm where items go on to live a happy life.


Resources:

Brands are saying goodbye to Black Friday
Glossy
Black Friday is falling out of fashion, based on consumer values and behavior. The discounting holiday that was once consolidated into Black Friday has grown for many brands to be an event spanning at least two weeks. The discounts themselves, therefore, tend to be less compelling. What’s more, the whole idea of the holiday conflicts with the emerging conscious consumers’ values.

Should resale sites ban fast fashion? It’s complicated
Vogue Business
Vestiaire Collective bans fast fashion items from being sold on its peer-to-peer resale platform. Documenting a trip to Ghana, the Vestiarie team witnessed the magnitude of unwanted textiles and “donated” clothes consuming west Africa. The ban presented as a sustainability play to crack down on waste raises questions on how circular business models should handle pervasive fast fashion.

What If Buying Used Clothes Was as Easy as Buying New?
Bloomberg
Finding exactly the type of clothing you want or need secondhand can be a slog. A new company called Beni aims to make the process easier by suggesting used items while a customer is shopping online for new ones. The goal, says Beni Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Sarah Pinner, is to make buying resale “as easy as buying new, so buying new isn’t just the default.”

Secondhand Sunday is Fashion’s Latest Initiative in the Rise of Resale
Triple Pundit
First came Black Friday. Eventually Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday arrived. But what about the Sunday after Thanksgiving? Online marketplace Poshmark has the answer: Secondhand Sunday, a new holiday dedicated to “supporting secondhand sellers, circular fashion, and the planet.” Poshmark is calling on people to buy used instead of new on Nov. 27 and to share their finds on social media with the hashtag #SecondhandSunday.

Second-hand clothes from the West pose environmental challenges in Africa – Experts
Punch
Plastic waste and oil are not the only contributors to the worrying global waste problem. Clothes are too. Several data undisputedly allude to the fact that developing countries in Africa are large importers of used clothes and face the problem of clothing waste. An international trade data organization, The Observatory of Economic Complexity, pegged Nigeria as one of the top five importers of used clothing with an annual fee of $124M. Earth.org reports that 92 million tonnes of textiles waste are produced globally, every year. This implies that a truck full of unwanted clothing ends up on landfill sites every day. As the trend of fast fashion continues, textile waste is expected to soar by 50 percent by 2030.

The Pros and Cons of Vintage Shopping
Impakter
Vintage and consignment shops support sustainability by promoting the resale and reuse of long-lasting items instead of alternatively throwing them away. Secondhand shopping and thrifting are keys to Earth’s future. We’ve reached the point where new production is unnecessary. Our planet is riddled with goods we don’t even use. Many items are overproduced and end up in landfills as quickly as they were assembled. People purchasing brand-new items for every occasion are perpetuating this system – secondhand shopping slows this cycle.

The Stretched Scope of Secondhand: Clothing and More
Impakter
There was a time when yard sales were our main vessel of resale but luckily, technological advancements have obliterated previous limitations. The internet alone has stretched the scope of the secondhand industry. We now have the technology to sell our trash and buy another person’s treasure from the comfort of our own homes. Cell phone apps, reselling websites, and social media have increased secondhand transactions and clothing isn’t the only thing people are buying.

LVMH Launches Curated Archive Platform Heristoria
WWD
PARIS — LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has launched Heristoria, a platform of archival and historical pieces. The platform aims to find treasures within the company’s maisons and launch special sales of unique items, each paired with experiences and services. “Heristoria reflects our passion for beautiful stories. Only a group like LVMH has the capacity to bring such a diversity of iconic heritage items under one umbrella; objects that are the ongoing expression of our maisons’ know-how,” said LVMH group managing director Toni Belloni.