How brands can use vintage clothes to reach new audiences

Boutique and designer fashion companies, whether shirtmakers or not, are perennially confronted with the following dilemma. How can they reach new audiences while maintaining their pricing power. In particular, they need a golden ratio that provides a low-cost way for consumers to be introduced to the product without cheapening it. You need to engage and nurture prospective consumers who either may not be ready to splurge just yet either due to unfamiliarity with the brand or lower purchasing power. Vintage clothing can a great way to achieve this. Customers who haven’t had a chance to try the brand out can, for a reasonably cost, purchase a vintage item at a thrift store or consignment shop. Particularly when it comes to physical retail, given that many brands are grouped together in one location, one can discover a clothing line they either weren’t aware or if that they were aware of but haven’t a chance to try out. An underestimated selling point of introducing consumers via vintage clothing is that the fact that the garment has been previously worn serves as a testament to its quality. It was previously owned; it’s been a few years since it was first manufactured and you tell it’s held up.

There is a habit formation that shapes retail purchasing patterns. When you’ve worn a brand’s clothing item before you are familiar with it and have had a chance to test out the quality. This makes visiting a boutique less of a leap. You’ve derisked a prospective purchase. There is also an element of curiosity. Once you’ve discovered a particular shirtmaker you are curious as to what other patterns they have on offering. You’ll visit the website or their local store to check it out. The vintage garment you’ve come to enjoy becomes the impetus for additional engagement with the brand. For firms concerned about diluting their pricing power this need not be a concern. The limited sizing, pattern availability, inconsistent inventory and lack of a curated experience means that it will always be for those willing to a little more work and be a little less picky in order to get a good deal. The convenience offered by a fashion retailer will also command a premium. They can sell you what you want when you want it without having to go treasure hunting.

Rather than diluting pricing power it helps reinforce it. Taking Apple as an example, as the iPhone as gotten more and more expensive it has become out of reach for most consumers. This has coincided with the rise of a second-hand electronics marketplaces that have caught on. This ensures that Apple customers remain iPhone users rather than being priced out. At the same time, they can charge a premium at the end of the marketplace for those who want something brand new. If not for the second-hand marketplace, many of these users would have converted to Android or another competitor.

This gives rise to the question of whether brand stores can participate in and earn revenue from the vintage clothing market for their own products. Across apparel, electronics and watches the widespread assumption is that there needs to be some distance between the retailer and any second-hand sellers. What’s interesting though is that with regard to electronics the lines are starting to get blurred in ways we haven’t seen in the fashion industry. Telecom companies have now embraced selling older models or letting you trade in an old phone. This is something that started on the fringes with repair shops fixing up old phones and reselling them. What started as an almost informal economic activity has now gone mainstream. Granted telecom operators are not the phone manufacturers themselves but, in any event, do serve as primary sellers the same a department store might for clothing. Often when you buy a new cellphone it’s because your previous one broke down. Part of the brilliance of a retailer letting you trade in an old phone is that it gets you in their store precisely when you do need to make a new purchase. While electronics and fashion may seem like very different industries a noteworthy commonality is that they have similar lifespans. If anything, especially for designer clothing you would expect it to last a lot longer than your cellphone or computer would. Therefore, if it’s possible for electronics it should be possible for clothes.

There are a few avenues one might envisage for a brand to participate in the resale of their own products and where they have a natural advantage. Those are repairs, quality verifications and trade-ins. As far as repairs are concerned, what we’ve seen with watches is that many owners especially the casual owner will default to using the official company service representative for any repairs rather than a local watch repair shop. They trust it because it’s the official rep even though more often than not it is more expensive and takes longer than going to a local watch repair specialist. A company will usually have one central workshop they send watches that need tinkering and so part of what you’re paying for is that they have to ship it back and worth rather than just fixing it on the spot. Watch collectors will take the time to find a good watch repairman and are less likely to rely on the official representative but for many owners they won’t know where to start and would rather turn to the official outlet. Fashion firms shy away from engaging in repairs as they tend to be allergic to anything that doesn’t involve buying a brand-new garment. What they fail to recognize is that the brand you keep wearing is the brand you keep buying. Alterations are not free; they charge for them. So, there an income stream rather than constituting an eleemosynary pursuit. By offering repairs at in-store locations they can also give you an excuse to visit their store. Once you are there, you’ll check out the latest collection, realize there is something else you need and in addition to the repair purchase a new item as well. By flatly refusing to offer repairs they miss out on such interactions. What’s more, offering tailoring services can be a major advantage in terms of offering a better in store experience and letting you drastically simplify your inventory by carrying fewer sizing combinations and making adjustments as needed. One reason many stores won’t employ a tailor onsite is that there may not be enough volume of alterations to justify it. By offering alterations of vintage garments, they can generate enough volume to allow for on-site tailoring providing a critical boost to their in-store experience.

Another possible avenue are quality verifications. A major concern with second hand products is that the quality can be hit and miss. Especially when shopping online it’s can be hard to tell the actual condition of a fabric. Who better to speak to the state of the merchandise than the actual manufacturer. Consumers are more likely to trust the shirtmaker that made the shirt than a third-party reseller on eBay. One reason they can vouch for the quality is because they can supply the resale market directly. Moving inventory is the name of the game in retail. Selling older unsold inventory through vintage channels with a quality assurance from the maker can be a way to move inventory would not have sold otherwise. Given the ability to guarantee the quality one can price it at a higher price than second-hand clothing. Brands can develop a sustainable off ramp for their excess stock while addressing the concerns over quality that often come with vintage clothing. There is a second angle to quality verifications which is a fashion company verifying the quality of pre-owned clothing and serving as a broker between a consigner and the purchaser the same way a consignment shop does. Apart from being a natural destination for the brand’s products and being able to guarantee the quality, it could provide a much more curated selection given that all merchandise would fall under one fashion house. This is in stark contrast to a consignment shop where it can be rather difficult to shop for a particular label given that they are all grouped together. The consignment model would allow the fashion house to serve as a trusted purveyor of their pre-owned merchandise without the stock risk.

This brings us a third pillar which is trade-ins. When you want to upgrade your cellphone, you can bring the old model in and receive some sort of credit that counts towards your next purchase. When outgrowing clothing that is in good condition just no longer fits there should be a way to get some sort of credit towards to your next purchase. This cultivates and rewards long-term customers since they are incentivized to return to the same outfitter when they outgrow their clothes rather than heading somewhere else. That alone is worth it because it results in customer retention. If you have suit that doesn’t fit but you never really wore and is in mint condition rather letting it sit in your closet or discard it is not an optimal customer experience. If instead you can trade it in to get a suit that fits and receive a modest discount on your new purchase while someone else also receives a vintage item that is good as new two customers are satisfied.

In essence by offering both repairs and participating in circular fashion space, outfitters can participate in another transaction touchpoint whether your garment is frayed or the size is off respectively. There is an even more fundamental reason to do so though. Given that pre-owned clothing is a low-cost way for consumers to be introduced to a brand, by not participating they are missing out on the ability to be there at the earliest step a new customer’s journey. They won’t even be aware of their potential leads and thus cannot cultivate them as they are entirely absent from the consumer’s first experience with a brand.