Fast fashion is available, affordable but ultimately expendable. It has no resale value, and because it is designed to be of-the-moment and on trend, it has absolutely no staying power.
Designer fashion and accessories are a bit different, particularly the classics. They hold their value often – in some cases, they even increase in value, and almost always offer up a resale possibility. What a consumer may prefer to do with their budget is ultimately a matter of taste and what they can reasonably afford. But, as DiNunzio pointed out, what is quite certain is that the lifecycles of these products are quite different. Fast fashion items, once used up and past trend, generally end up taking up space in landfills.
Designer items, on the other hand – once they’ve outlived their usefulness for one owner, they can still have a full future in someone else’s closet. The magic of the digital age has unleashed scores of designer consignment options for consumers who want to wear the big labels, but either can’t or won’t pay the four-digit retail prices that often accompany them.
Tradesy is one of the digital portals where customers can buy designer items at a very discounted price. The items are still spendy – designers aren’t coming down to fast fashion prices – but a consumer can reasonably expect to pay a few hundred dollars for used item from a big name (Chanel, Gucci, Balenciaga, Louboutin, etc.), instead of the few thousand they could reasonably expect to pay at retail. The aim, according to DiNunzio, is to be a marketplace that functions as the web’s largest open closet, so that enthusiasts can browse, sell, buy and fully immerse themselves in fashion as a statement – and as an investment.
Tradesy Closet Concierge is a new service aimed at letting customers do more than find the objects they covet on the site: It will now extend to direct and personalized services that include wardrobe management by a professional stylist, who will not only help with organizing and styling, but also with managing customers’ designer item resales when they’re ready to cash in one classic for another.
The new service comes care of an acquisition: In April of 2018, Tradesy picked up Fitz, a service that pairs customers with personal stylists. Fitz was founded by Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, an entrepreneur previously known as the co-founder of Gilt and Glamsquad.
“Tradesy is the ideal partner for Fitz,” said Wilkis Wilson. “With Tradesy’s robust technology, infrastructure and large fashion-savvy user base, the service we built will now be positioned to scale dynamically across the country with Tradesy’s millions of customers.”
Among the more popular services now rolling out under the Tradesy banner are things like the
“3-Hour Closet Curation,” which sends a pair of stylists to a customer’s physical closet to evaluate the contents and offer a critical eye to help consumers decide what should stay, what should go up for sale and what needs to be consigned to a landfill and never spoken of again. The stylists, professionals who often hail from fashion schools or houses, are tasked with helping the women they serve make the most out of their wardrobes via resales and restocking. Tradesy also boasts a low commission rate, saying that their sellers get on average twice as much out of a sale as with other resellers, according to the company.
“The team at Fitz built an experience that absolutely thrills customers. Women just fall in love with having a perfectly organized closet, and form amazing relationships with their stylists,” DiNunzio said in a statement. “We’ve combined this top-tier experience with a new Tradesy consignment service that makes selling even easier. It’s everything busy, stylish women need to fully manage their modern wardrobe.”
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