The Vestiaire team forbids fast fashion

In the past 12 months, approximately five percent of items were placed on the resale platform Vestiaire team came from fast fashion brands such as Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing and Asos, the company said. These listings are gone this week.

The Paris-based company is aiming to outlaw fast fashion, strengthening its position at the top end of an increasingly competitive market and distancing its business from negative associations with wasteful overconsumption.

“We wanted to reduce the waste in people’s wardrobes, and that waste mostly comes from fast fashion because it has no value and therefore very little resale value,” said Vestiaire president and co-founder Fanny Moisant.

There is a company profitability orientation as there is a growing number of resale platforms competing for a limited number of customers. Its focus on higher-value items means higher sales commissions, although Moizant said the fast fashion ban has “nothing to do with the path to profitability” and the company has not calculated how the move will affect the business. “This is an important value-based decision,” she said.

From November 22, sellers on the platform will not be able to list new products of ultra-fast fashion brands. Those already on the site have been removed.

The move comes as hundreds of brands and retailers have opened their own second-hand markets, often offering in-store credit to attract new sellers and raising questions about whether the rise of online resale is a solution to the problem of fashion waste or a tool for even more consumption.

Vestiaire, whose among the investors is the French luxury conglomerate Keringseeks to position its business as an antidote to consumers’ worst shopping habits.

“Our industry’s biggest problem … is overproduction and overconsumption,” Moisant said. “We need to take a stand.”

Over the next three years, Vestiaire plans to expand the brands banned on its platform, working with an external consultant to establish a robust set of criteria, including metrics such as product quality, carbon footprint and supply chain conditions. The company expects new product labeling rules being developed across Europe to help provide more visibility into the data it needs to do this.

The resale platform promotes the ban as a way to encourage more responsible consumption. But the move also eliminates an outlet that would help extend the life of cheap clothes that are often disposed of after minimal use.

To address this tension, Vestiaire aims to push European regulators to take a stronger stance in tackling the mountains of clothing waste generated by the fashion industry each year. “This is really us trying to change the industry and move the needle to a higher level,” Moizant said.

The resale company is working on a policy document Fund Ora charity that operates the Cantamanta market in Accra, Ghana, one of the world’s largest second-hand markets and a destination for millions of discarded clothes from Western wardrobes.

Vestiaire “isn’t there to serve the industry, they’re here to challenge the industry,” Or Foundation director Liz Ricketts said. Lobbying for firm regulation is an important part of the company’s efforts because Vestiaire “can ban fast fashion on its platform… Kantamanto can’t ban it from coming into Ghana,” she added.