There are significant benefits to investing in recommerce. Recommerce can provide solutions to problems created by an unsustainable business model by lowering the environmental impact of carbon and waste, engaging customers better, reducing costs and generating new revenue.
Become more sustainable. Moving from a linear to a circular business model is much more sustainable. This is because you move away from simply using and manufacturing from raw materials, which leads to waste. Through a circular process, your brand is able to lower the environmental impact by leveraging materials that extend the life of your products. After all, reselling an existing item requires less energy, water and raw materials. Furthermore, a recommerce product avoids creating additional CO2 that producing a new one would generate.
Reduce waste. Items that are usually discarded because they need repairing, are dirty or simply because someone returned them all get a second life. They no longer end up in landfills but instead in the wardrobe of a happy consumer. According to research, 62 per cent of used clothing and textiles end up in household waste - reusing these items can result in environmental impact that is 70 times lower than when producing new clothing.[2]
Improve customer loyalty. Sustainability binds brands and their customers more tightly together. Recommerce enables people to shop online while simultaneously making sustainable choices. Consumers like brands that are willing to address climate change - 73 per cent of millennials even say they would be willing to pay more for sustainable brands.[3] New customers will discover your brand thanks to the sustainable options you offer them.
Recover or lower costs. Today, returned items are often a large cost for your company - in 2021 alone, returns cost retailers a staggering USD 218 billion.[4] It costs money to have items returned, processed, refunded and stored or destroyed. If you leverage operations for recommerce into your returns process, more products are likely to be sold rather than discarded.
Generate additional sales. You expand the market you operate in with the growing second-hand market, which is estimated to be valued at USD 218 billion by 2026, expanding three times faster than the global apparel market overall.[5] If you gain a foothold in that market, you will generate additional sales thanks to new consumers and re-engagement with former or existing customers.
[1] https://cf-assets-tup.thredup....
[2] https://www.letsrecycle.com/ne...
[3] https://theroundup.org/sustain...
[4] https://robosize.com/blog/how-...
[5] https://www.thredup.com/resale...
