Results

The core of our work is around customer discovery. Can we find a model that aligns interests between 1) brands, end-consumers and (potentially) second-hand marketplaces? 2) sustainability and profits?

We know that:

1. Second-hand fashion is growing 20x faster than traditional fashion and the bulk of profits go to second-hand marketplaces such as Vestiaire Collective.
2. Some brands have started investing, eager to recruit new customers and generate revenue streams, but most are worried about brand image and profitability.
3. Startups taking a brand-centric positioning are flourishing, either with white-label models (Yerdle) or posting to second-hand marketplaces (Reflaunt).

We have interviewed every role from heads of sustainability, e-commerce, digital and innovation, operations within brands, as well as competitors and end-consumers. Our interviews started free-form to understand the problem and we are introducing protyping to test our solution-specific hypotheses.

The technical part of our project is building a pricing algorithm to predict the optimal price of a luxury good on the second-hand market. Our hypothesis is that instant price transparency will incentivize sellers and brands to participate in second-hand as profitability is ensured.

Check out our consumer-facing prototype.