Birth of a Star

Every day, we here at KURB dedicate bits, bytes, time, and the occasional tear to the secondhand designer market. After all, our continuing mission is to be the qualitative and quantitative authority on the subject. We are uniquely positioned to collect data and insights from every corner of the digital landscape that no other platform can, providing a window to examine even the most discrete shifts in the ecosystem's terrain. What is not-so-hidden is that the secondhand market has been growing like a runaway nebula, with hundreds of independent stores joining the constellation as bright little stars of their own. What once would have existed only as remote side-street treasures are now at your fingertips with a single search. As we continually add these vendors to our index alongside major marketplaces, KURB’s growth enables a one-of-a-kind search experience for the fashion obsessed, like ourselves.

To give you a quick lay of the land, the secondhand market can be roughly split into four separate categories of stores, in order of market size: 

1. There are Marketplaces like eBay, Vinted, Vestiaire Collective, Mercari, Sellpy, Mai App that routinely list and sell the majority of secondhand designer clothing. Typically, every country has at least one with some facilitating peer-to-peer sales (Grailed, Depop) while others operate through a warehouse (Thredup, TheRealReal). 

2. There are resale stores like 2nd Street, Trefac, Goodwill, Rinkan, Bazzstore, Unique Designer Pieces, A Retro Tale, Street Commerce that represent a step down in scale from Marketplaces. They offer a less expansive operation though having several locations and a developed business model and great at catering to their local demographics, and handle significant volume through a combination of e-commerce and in-store sales.

3. Then there are Independent Stores like Archive Reloaded, Constant Practice, ether archive, source.ph who excel at offering highly curated collections of secondhand designer clothing by utilizing their specialized market knowledge and taste. Their small scale and curatorial processes allow them to make the most of their lower overall volume and niche. They often organise sales through a combination of different channels like a store website, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and occasionally larger marketplaces. They represent the evolution from a personal buyer/seller to a realized market opportunity built on fashion research and vision. While Independent Stores represent a small slice of the market share for second-hand, they occupy a vital niche due to their experimental approach to the market, often catering to discerning consumers and collectors.

4. And finally, auction houses like Sotheby’s, Catawiki, Bonham’s and Drouot. These are a bit exceptional and cater to collectors and investors, where someone might see articles from the personal collections of designers, distinctive runway pieces, and clothing from TV & film. They occupy a very small segment of the market but present novel opportunities to acquire one-of-a-kind items.These have an entirely different dynamic to the previous store categories, but still there exists a heavy reliance on thorough market research and advising for pricing and sourcing.

It is then possible to become even more granular and categorize these stores based on explicit business models, demographic splits, channel distribution, technology utilized, etc, but the above gives us an appropriate and useful level of abstraction.

Over the last couple years there has been an explosion of Independent Stores entering the market. Largely stimulated by the ever increasing accessibility to the secondhand designer market and pre-dating the routine usage of LLM’s. There was a perfect storm of consumer sentiment for circular consumer practices, cultural knowledge around designer brands, and technologies which stimulated the discovery and access of secondhand clothing, assisting those with a business ambition to spin-up a secondhand designer store in minutes. Consequently, this eruption of stores has further fragmented and diversified the already fraught landscape. 

While KURB unifies the entire secondhand designer market while offering users tools to strategically explore and maintain oversight of it, the complexity of the landscape is accelerating. For Independent Stores the terrain has become harsher and harsher, just over the last year we have witnessed stores open and close their doors within 12 months. In part, this is due to the inherent scalability challenges that come with running an Independent secondhand designer store. When you consider that every item requires a substantial amount of labour to procure, list, and sell the business becomes fragile. For example, for a single item to move from a seller to a buyer an Independent Store must:

1. Source an item at a reasonable price across the secondhand market.

2. Research the history, authenticity and quality of the item.

3. Organise the procurement, if for example the item requires a proxy service or something more complex.

4. Document the item in preparation for listing.

5. Stage and photograph the item.

6. List the item on different channels.

7. Communicate with potential buyers across channels.

8. Ship the item.

At least every one of these steps have to be repeated for a sale to occur. While technologies exist to streamline many of these steps, like KURB’s ability to aid steps 1, 2 and 3, this is still a taxing process, so much so that efficiently solving any one of the aforementioned steps can be a business in itself. For many Independent Stores, the unit economics quickly fall apart unless dealing with substantial margins or other remarkable market advantages a seller may have. This strenuous process has contributed to the birth of a wholly new category of store, residing between the marketplace and independent store, the Curated Platform.

Curated Platforms encompass vendors who occupy the ever increasing gap between Independent Stores and Marketplaces. They leverage the value Independent Stores offer in terms of expert fashion research, curatorial excellence, personalized branding and the technological edge of Marketplaces to streamline listing, sales and customer liaison. While Marketplaces enable anyone to sign-up and participate in their markets, Curated Platforms have a more strict barrier to entry: they concentrate on working alongside sellers who provide something distinctive or exceptional to the market. Catalyzing the sellers they work with to focus on their business while the Curated Platform resolves the admin surrounding their store; leveraging their collective economics to present more ambitious activation opportunities, forming a positive business feedback loop. These Curator Platform dynamics are presented on platforms like Known Source and Shop Storage.

The merit of Curated Platforms can also be seen in how they offer a safety net for exceptional Independent Stores. While an Independent Store often excels in sourcing and curation, they may struggle with the admin and business elements of running an independent store, distracting them from their speciality. This is where a Curated Platform can come in to strengthen those areas, enabling them to accelerate at what they’re good at. This means for a lot of sellers who struggle to make the leap from a Marketplace participant to an Independent Store don’t have to then fall into the abyss, but instead- given their seller merit, can exist within a Curated Platform. Although it is still a question about what happens if a Independent Store on an Curated Platform flies towards the sun, are they scorched for abandoning the platform or free to climb to greater heights without them?