Value of Luxury Has Changed; Secondhand Will Further Shape its Connotation

How does Reflaunt work? What were the initial problems that you faced and how have you gone about addressing/resolving those? 
Stephanie Crespin: Reflaunt is a resale technology provider for fashion brands, facilitating the resale or repurposing of unworn items directly on their ecommerce platforms. Our clients include renowned fashion brands such as COS, Balenciaga, Net-a-porter, and Harvey Nichols.

Leading brands leverage Reflaunt's global operations and resale infrastructure to seamlessly handle their customers' luxury wardrobe. We inspect and value each item, resell it, and enhance customer loyalty through shopping credit rewards.

Reflaunt fosters collaboration across the value chain, connecting retailers, resale marketplaces, recycling and upcycling experts, supply chain traceability players, and repair service providers. This unprecedented network spans over 350 million secondhand shoppers globally.

In essence, Reflaunt empowers brands to regain control of their secondhand market, contributing to a significant reduction in textile waste destined for landfills.

Initial problems faced were mostly signing the first brands.

Need to understand how does it work with brands... the supply chain... technology yes, but how is inventory managed? Is the resale entirely online? How are returns managed?
Stephanie Crespin: A customer goes through Netaporter resale interface, organises pickup. Once the items are picked-up, they are sent to one of our operational hubs (we have five across the globe), the items are sorted, checked, processed, digitised. The items are then automatically put on sale on a network of marketplace (more than 30 worldwide). Once the item is sold on one of these marketplaces, it is shipped. If there is a return, the marketplace sends it back to our hub. It’s inspected to ensure it is in the same condition.

Which was the first brand that you onboarded? How many brands now?
Stephanie Crespin: Today we have about 20 brands. One of our first brand was COS.

What are the challenges still when it comes to resale and also buying of preloved luxury goods, specially fashion? 
Stephanie Crespin: Challenges include:

1. Friction in the resale journey—vast majority of items can't be traced back to digital asset, so we lose all the data regarding the product info, the purchase info, in turn creating operational complexities and issues of traceability.
2. Lack of operational scalable infrastructure to process and put back on sale the tremendous amount of accumulated fashion.
3. The existing model leading to oversupply and competition of discounted end of stock making secondhand less attractive.
4. "Searchability" of preloved—buyer experience is painful and lengthy to find desired items.

Take us back to how the idea was conceived, implemented. 
Stephanie Crespin: My first company was a secondhand marketplace. It didn't make sense to me that firsthand and secondhand were working in silos, that a same customer would buy and resell an item through two disconnected experiences (one with the brand and another with a secondhand marketplace). It appeared evident that the brand needed to be involved and that the customer journey be integrated from the moment a customer makes a purchase to the moment he resells.

Tell us about the fundings received and how did they help you grow your business? 
Stephanie Crespin: We raised a $12 million Series A two years ago. This was necessary to build our cutting-edge technology, helped us expand operations worldwide, equipping warehouses across the globe with our software, integrating more retailers and marketplaces in our network.

More and more such platforms are coming up and so obviously there are takers. What is your USP and what's the strategy to deal with competition? 
Stephanie Crespin: Two USPs: 

1. Thanks to the operational infrastructure built over years to process single skus, we have a decentralised model where we equip players like DHL or the Chalhoub group. We are thus the only player to have global coverage.
2. We maximise the liquidity of secondhand products by selling not only with the brand (if they wish to) but also on the biggest network of marketplaces and retailers including Saks, Yoox, Rebelle, Ebay, Level Shoes, Vinted across the globe.

How do luxury brands react to this business model? Any experience/s that you would like to share? 
Stephanie Crespin: They love the fact that they can offer the resale service to their own customers without having to resale the products themselves (as sold on our network); they value the fact that we do all the heavy lifting for them, from the collection of items to the digitisation and resale. We have achieved great results when it comes to loyalty and repeat of their customers, increasing 3.5X the LTV or lifetime value of customers for our biggest clients.

How is the “operational partnership” with DHL Supply Chain, a global leader in contract logistics, expected to “reshape the dynamics of fashion resale”?
Stephanie Crespin: Following a successful one-year pilot, DHL Supply Chain and Reflaunt have combined their capabilities to unveil a scalable platform redefining how brands power their resale operations: Reflaunt brings their expertise on fashion resale while DHL Supply Chain brings their robust logistic backbone to the operations. The biggest hurdle in resale is the ability to unlock substantial scale globally due to inconsistent infrastructure and high cost of acquisition/digitisation of inventory. That is what this alliance aims to change bringing together scalability, infrastructure, and cost management.

For years, first and second hands have been in separate corners. You buy an item from a brand, then sell it in a completely different experience. It's been a headache for users and brands alike. Reflaunt's been shaking things up, by tearing down the walls between first and second hand, and e-commerce and re-commerce. Our cooperation with DHL opens the door to a seamless circular supply chain. Imagine one place handling first hand fulfilment, returns, resale management, and other end of life solutions such as recycling. That's the game-changing expertise Reflaunt brings to supply chain operators, and teaming up with DHL is a real win.