New York (AP) – stores selling used clothes, shoes and accessories are about to benefit from the president Donald Trumptrade war even if companies worldwide Race to avoid potential damage, according to industry experts.
American styles have an international influence, but almost all Clothes sold at the national level made elsewhere. Last week, the Yale University Budget Lab estimated that short -term short -term price increases of 65% for clothing and 87% for leather items, noting that American prices “affect these goods disproportionately”.
These price increases can drive buyers concerned with costs On online resale sites, consignment shops and thrift stores looking for good deals or a means of transforming their cabinets into a cash. The articles used cost less than their new equivalents and would only be subject to prices if they came from outside the country.
“I think the resale will develop on a declining market,” said Kristen Classi-Zummo, analyst of the clothing industry in the market research company Circana. “What I think will continue to gain in this chaotic environment, these are channels that bring value.”
The perspectives of used fashion are nevertheless delivered with unknowns, especially if the president’s prices will remain long enough to pinch consumers and change their behavior. It is also difficult to know if used suppliers will increase their own prices, either to reflect the overall market, or in response to buyers’ demand.
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Jan Genovese, a retired fashion manager, sells his unwanted designer clothes via customer markets to customer as a merchant. If the prices led to an increase in retail prices, it would consider high -end second -hand sites.
“Until I see it and I really have this sticker shock, I cannot say exclusively that I will be pushed in another direction,” said Genovese. “I think the tariff part is that you are permanently thinking about things. And maybe I’ll start looking at alternative places. ”
The second -hand clothing market was already flourishing before the prices spectrum was falling into the American fashion industry. The management consulting firm McKinsey and Co. After the cocovide-19 pandemic that the world’s world’s fashion revenues would increase 11 times faster than sales of retail clothes this year while buyers were looking to save money or spend it in a more concerned with the environment path.
While millennials and generation Z members were known as the main buyers of used clothing, data from the Tower of the Society of Market Cabinets show the public can develop.
The number of mobile applications downloads for nine resale markets The Firm Tracks – Ebay, Offer, Poshmark, Mercari, Craigslist, ExceedThredup, Therealreal and Vintted – increased by 3% between January and late March, the first quarterly gain in three years, said Sensor Tower.
The company estimates that downloads of applications for eBay, Depop, Thredup and The Realreal also increased compared to a year earlier for the week of March 31, which was when Trump revealed Punitive rates since paid on dozens of countries.
Circana’s Classi-Zummo said that while customers were looking for a collection or unusual Vintage parts To complete their cabinets, she noticed that more buyers turning to used sites to replace regular fashion items.
“It’s always a cheaper option” than buying new ones, even if the retailers offer discounts, she said.
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Poshmark, a digital platform where users buy and sell second-hand clothes, has not yet seen the sales resuming in the pricing calendar that Trump has unveiled but is ready to capitalize at the time, said CEO Manish Chandra.
Companies operating electronic commercial markets improve their technology to facilitate the search for articles. A visual research tool and other improvements in the poshmark experience “will pay long dividends in terms of disturbance on the market” from prices, said Chandra.
Archive, a technological company based in San Francisco which builds and manages online and store resale programs for brands such as Dr. Martens, The North Face and Lululemon, noticed that clothing labels express more emergency to team up, said Emily Gittins, CEO.
“Pressing all the inventories that are already in the United States, either in people’s cupboards, or in warehouses that are not used,” she said a source of income while brands limit or suspend orders for foreign manufacturers, “she said.
“There is a huge uncertainty,” said Gittins. “Everyone believes that it will be extremely damaging for brands of consumer goods that sell in the United States, so resale is essentially where everyone is going.”
Stock market analysts predicted that housing retailers such as TJ Maxx and Burlington stores will not resist prices more easily than regular clothing chains and regular clothing chains and regular clothing chains and department stores Because they wear remaining goods in the United States
Price out of the market previously held
However, resale sellers are not immune to upheavals induced by pricessaid Rachel Kibbe, founder and CEO of Circular Services Group, a company that advises brands and retailers on reducing the environmental impact of the fashion industry.
American sellers who import a second -hand inventory of European Union countries should pay an obligation of 20% If Trump advances With the institution of “reciprocal” prices on most business partners and eliminates an exception of import tax for parcels worth less than $ 800, Kibbe said.
A circular fashion coalition that she directs is looking for a price exemption for used and recycled goods that will be offered for resale, said Kibbe. Asset already finished the duty franchise provision for low value packages Chinaa decision that can benefit sellers of used clothes by making Chinese modes at low prices More expensive, she said.
James Reinhart, co-founder and CEO of the Thredup online consignment market, declared the abolition of the “minimis” and The 145% price Trump put products made in China would benefit businesses like his. He doubts that the creation of resale channels would make a big difference for individual marks.
“The brands will explore this and they can do more, but I do not see them changing their operations massively,” said Reinhart. “I think they will understand how to survive. And I don’t think the resale helps you survive. ”
Rebag, an online market and a retail chain that sells used designers at the price of $ 500 to tens of thousands of dollars, expects the prices to help drive new customers and open more physical stores, said CEO Charles Gorra.
Gorra said that the company would analyze the prices of new luxury products and adjust the reduction costs accordingly. The two historically increased in tandem, but Rebag could not match the price increase of 10% of Chanel last year due to the lower resale demand, said Gorra.
“It has nothing to do with prices,” he said. “Consumers feel at a price.”
Norah Brotman, 22, senior from the University of Minnesota, buys most of her own clothes on Ebay. It also saves fashion from the 1990s and the early 2000s to Good will and sell them on Depop.
If the prices increase Rapid fashion economy And discouraging insane consumption, Brotman would count that as a plus.
“I would love if it was directing people in a different direction,” she said.
