New e-tail trend: Are you game for someone's used clothes?

The secon hand fashion market will reach Rs 20,000 crore by 2020

Fancy that Zara, Mango or Gucci dress but think it's out of bounds for you? There is hope for you, as buying someone's used garments is no longer taboo in today's India.

Rekinza and Elanic are start-ups which started their journey in March and October last year, respectively. They chose a rather unusual domain of business, selling of re-used apparel and other fashion items.  Re-commerce, the term for this, is gathering steam in India, they say. It is at present led by Quickr and OLX.

Vidisha Pasari, co-founder at Rekinza, said: "Fashion e-commerce in India is projected to reach a market size of Rs 2 lakh crore by 2020. Of this, second-hand fashion has the potential to constitute over 10 per cent by 2020, implying a market size of Rs  20,000 crore.” The pie, therefore, is not small and these new entities smell an opportunity.

Used furniture, books, cars or electronic items have been bought and sold freely for years in India. The group of young entrepreneurs at Rekinza and Elanic spotted a gap in the re-used garments segment. They came up with the idea of creating platforms that would enable a seller (someone who has either outgrown or lost interest in a garment) to find  a prospective buyer (who cannot afford a brand new high-street fashion brand) and do the transaction. The revenue model is  simple; they charge per transaction.

Who are their customers? Pasari explains: "Rekinza’s demographic is online shoppers, so the majority lie in the age group of 18-40 years. Our sellers range from college students whose wardrobes must stay on trend, to recent graduates who need a wardrobe makeover in sync with their new job, to someone who simply does not know what to do with all the gifts she got during her wedding, to women who have outgrown their closets."

Rekinza's average transaction size is approximately Rs 2,500 at the moment, while they have also sold items as expensive as Rs 50,000. "Everyday wear brands like Zara, H&M, Mango and Coach are very popular and tend to get sold out almost the day they are uploaded,” Pasari claimed. These are basically high-street fashion brands, gently used.

Quality, hence, is of prime importance. Both companies closely inspect the items (shoes, bags, dresses to books, toys and home decor) and vouch that they only allow those products to get transacted which meet 'quality standards' or are as good as new, meaning, minimally used.  

Rekinza claims that it gets 80,000 hits a month and plan to scale up the business from 80-100 orders a week to 80-100 a day in about a year. Elanic, a mobile app-only platform, currently takes sellers only from Bengaluru; it plans to expand to other cities.