Fashion resale business Reluv is undergoing a business remodelling that commenced last year, which has recently resulted in the upgrading of its marketing automation platform to better segment what its customers receive.
The next step in Reluv's scaling journey is to optimise its listing workflow to accelerate product uploads, founder Karen Freidin said.
“Resale is very manual and requires each and every item to be inspected, listed, measured and photographed,” Freidin said. “We see technology as a way around this and continue to explore our options.
“We're constantly developing our technology stack to automate and streamline listing processes. We also see artificial intelligence coming in to fill mundane tasks and speed processing time up.”
This aim for scale comes as the global resale market is set to double by 2027 - when it is expected to hit US$350 billion (A$542 billion) - according to a recent report by ThredUp. By the end of 2024, resale is also expected to account for 10 per cent of the global apparel market.
Since launching in 2019, Reluv has expanded its team to now five people - who each process around a thousand items per month. Year-on-year sales have also grown by 53 per cent in its second year and just under 30 per cent in its third year.
“In our third year, we moved our attention from growth and dedicated the year to re-platforming our website, onboarding new technologies to manage consignors, customer ticketing, and we changed to a better marketing automation platform.”
“By being small, online only and obsessive about staying lean and managing growth, we are able to test and fail quickly.”
Reluv sells women’s clothing via an online store, with a key target market that is over 35 years old.
According to Freidin, Reluv’s delivery process is as experiential as some high-end brands, which she said is driving stickiness. All of its items have a white Reluv branded tag with a product description and an SKU professionally printed. The business packs its orders in pink tissue paper and seals the tissue with a ‘Certified Reluvable’ sticker and a printed 'thank you' card.
“We are starting to see familiar names on orders,” Freidin reveals. “For example, a customer who started shopping with Reluv in February has now placed 5 orders.”
The brand also has an average basket size of around three items. This has grown from around 1.8 items in its first two years of trading.
However, Freidin said this is skewed as the business also lists on some marketplaces, too, which tend to encourage single-item purchases.
“Removing marketplace sales basket size places us around just under 5 items per basket, and I expect that to grow,” Freidin said. “In terms of building conversion, we have so much scope to grow in terms of referral, affiliate, subscription, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, emerging marketplaces - these are still virtually untapped for us.”
Freidin added that its strongest drivers are both word of mouth and organic search. Speaking on the latter, she said organic search outperforms paid search in terms of traffic delivery to the site.
“As we have such a large breadth and depth of product, shoppers are finding us while searching for specific new and used items as we appear in these searches,” Freidin said. “This will only grow as we add more items to the Reluv website.”
Looking ahead, Freidin said the fashion resale market is undergoing a unique transformation. She said while buying pre-loved items is becoming trendy, there are valid concerns about overconsumption despite it being more sustainable than buying new clothes.
“The resale industry has its complexities,” Freidin said. “Many online stores struggle to scale due to the vast knowledge and technology infrastructure needed.
“Success requires expertise in e-commerce, marketing, consignment management, data analysis, IT, product handling, photography image management, inventory control, warehousing, and logistics, and most importantly knowing what items to accept and price accordingly.
Freidin also added that Australia is behind Europe and the United States in terms of resale and fashion circularity.
“But we have definitely seen growth in this area over the past few years with more modes for resale including in-person markets, marketplaces and online resale platforms, product stewardship legislation for apparel businesses emerging and consumer awareness of and willingness to shop preloved.
“We will continue to see a rise in resale in Australia in the next few years, and I expect branded resale to become more widespread and become incorporated into apparel brands sustainability strategies.”