(File image). Photo: 123RF
Online second hand clothing stores across Aotearoa have seen an increase in the amount of people wanting to sell their clothes over the past year.
The rise started during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown and has kept momentum as people continue to bear the brunt of the high cost of living.
Instead of having a physical shop presence, many of the stores have focused on being online only which has played a big part in their success.
Hayley owns The Trading Rack - a second hand store that operates through Instagram and its website. She said they had seen a big increase in people wanting to sell their clothes.
The store was online only and sold clothes for people through consignment so they did not have to organise selling the clothes themselves.
"I think that people are realising rather than having, these gorgeous items sitting in their closet being unworn, they can sell them and make a little bit extra money on the side, that's a huge bonus," she said.
She was based in Christchurch and said not having to pay to rent or lease space for an actual store has been a big way she has been able to save on costs starting up her business.
Instead, she was focused on selling clothes through Instagram - where the main audience was young women aged between 25 and 45 years old.
"We're so lucky to be able to run our business completely online. It just takes that huge cost of having to pay for a lease in a busy town because that's a huge, huge cost for business," she said.
She said her audience has now grown offshore, due to the stores online and social media presence.
"They don't have to leave their house if they don't want to and it's not weather dependent. Because when I started I had a little container place in Tauranga and it was so weather dependent, like if it was raining, no one would come and I wasn't online at that point," she said.
"My only audience was Tauranga city and if Tauranga was quiet I was quiet, but now online you can sell nationwide and I even sell to Australia."
Wendy Quach is the chief executive of &Again, a thrift clothing store which has a warehouse but also sells its stock online, mainly through Instagram.
Wendy Quach founder of &Again an online consignment and thrift store that delivers a modern thrifting experience. Photo: Supplied
People were willing to branch out from their usual clothing styles to pay better prices, Quach said.
While Designer Wardrobe is a more established New Zealand based website, it is also seeing a surge in popularity.
It is an online store where people can create listings and sell their preloved clothes, as well as buy others second hand clothes.
Chief executive Aidan Bartlett said during the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year, there had been an increase of 20 percent in the number of listings added to the website.
Designer Wardrobe had also seen an 15 percent jump in the number of items being sold over the same period, he said.
"Right now, there is that cost of living crisis and on Designer Wardrobe, most of our buyers favourite brands are usually around 60 percent off retail. It really is just smart shopping," he said.
He said more Kiwis were looking to buy and sell pre-loved clothing to help get some extra cash and also minimise waste and their carbon footprint.
"A pair of jeans can be up to 60 bathtubs of water, which is crazy when you quantify it in that way.
"There's a lot more education, just awareness around the effects of it and choosing preloved is a way to help reduce that, especially when you buy something, it's already been made,"
Quality clothes were en vogue - while the amount of fast fashion items being listed was dropping, he said.
Items by Shein made up less than three items for every 1000 items sold.
"It's a very small part of Designer Wardrobe, but again it comes to can we extend the life of an item? That's essentially why we let those hyper fast fashion brands be listed," he said.
Designer Wardrobe has also doubled its user base, growing from one in every 20 women in New Zealand using their app and platform in 2020 to one in 10 in 2024.
It had a total of 325,000 members.
