The Ecology of Online Resale Vendors

Consolidating swaths of designer clothing littered across the internet into a single endless expanse comes with its own unique madness. One such dose of delirium was born from distinguishing between the kinds of vendors on KURB.

To combat this data-mania, we set out to understand the mechanisms that underlie the vendors we platform. We developed a simple lexicon that groups different vendors according to their essential characteristics to aid our navigation of digital designer resale terrain as can be seen in our Vendors page. In general, there are four types of online vendors: Marketplaces, Resellers, Consignment Stores, and Auction Houses - each of which we will outline to offer some orientation while entranced by our doom scroll.

Resellers

These vendors are the backbone of the design resale economy, think bintagged, Capsule Collective, Derek Ascham. They are typically creative independents or small groups of creatives with a strong sense of identity and curatorial vision that band under a single brand. They loosely function as conventional stores that specialise in sourcing and communicating niche designer resale collections. These vendors can often be perceived as academics, reselling clothing to self-finance their passion and research for designer clothing in a constant tandem. They possess unique troves of information and understanding for the clothing they resell and function exhaustively to communicate this through creative content they produce and present for their store. Many of these vendors operate more as vehicles for the curators to express their creative energy while taking on all the risks and rewards of reselling clothing. Often these stores will use site builders like Shopify or SquareSpace to produce their website and handle e-commerce, or some may just deal through their Instagram, while others may do all the above and have a physical space. These vendors demand a substantial resource commitment to establish, maintain, and grow, which is why they usually appear after having tested the waters on established marketplaces.

Marketplaces

This encompasses platforms like Vinted, Mercari (JP), and Tradera, where everyone from a younger sibling to geriatric family member is likely to have used at one time or another, and often offer second-hand products beyond designer clothing. Marketplaces are fundamentally a digital flea market, aggregating individual resellers into one space, streamlining the store setup process - offering an accessible and scalable vendor solution. Every user has the opportunity to become their own resale store, with some Marketplaces focused on designer clothing, others handmade crafts, and some with no product specificity. While Marketplaces reduce the barrier of entry for reselling online, they come with unique advantages and disadvantages. For a Marketplace to function, they need sellers to operate within their own defined framework. This can stifle the ability to communicate clothing, there is fiercer competition among other resellers on the same platform, and there are often fees applied to items sold over the Marketplace. However, Marketplaces offer oversight over transactions and users, establishing an incentive for participants to behave responsibly and sometimes offer mediation avenues if disputes arise based on the rules of the Marketplace. While the Marketplaces themselves can seem creatively sterile, they can be used as testbeds to try out a designer resale venture with less risk, allowing someone to more carefully decide if they have the resources to become an independent reseller. Many resellers (Suit Of Lights, Karasu Shop) and stores (Ragtag) also utilise Marketplaces while maintaining their own independent resale vendor.

Consignment Stores

These are vendors who purchase and sell clothing on the behalf of someone else like CSD, Decades, and Fashion Pile, and also capture vendors like About Glamour, Rinkan, and Swop, who resell their own stock alongside. The bookkeeping and maintenance of consignment products can be exhausting, but it can be less risky stock-investment-wise, as the consignment does not bear the responsibility of sourcing but offers the apparatus to facilitate the sale of an item, often in exchange for a cut of the sale price. Some exist as platforms whose aesthetic and operation can be likened to Marketplaces, while some operate on a smaller, independent scale and possess traits akin to independent resellers. In effect, consignment stores can operate at different scales, but the function is always the same: that they sell products on behalf of someone else for a commission.

Auction Houses

Auction Houses present a more theatrical and unique shopping experience and can be some of the best places to reliably find historical designer clothing being resold, sometimes in naivety. These vendors are typically more established, such as Bonhams, Drouot and Invaluable, and possess the infrastructure and resources to host competitive bidding events. This also introduces a challenge to our lexicon; although vendors like Yahoo Auctions and eBay allow someone to bid, they are more contrived auctions processes with minimum bid thresholds and buy-out prices. But most importantly, these vendors operate as an aggregation of sellers with the auction feature available; thus we describe them as Marketplaces first and foremost. Auction Houses often boast a rich business history and an established roster of clientele whom they cater to through auctioning of historical products appealing to their particular tastes. While exploring an Auction Houses catalogue, it’s not uncommon to see scores of priceless historical fine art alongside collections of Hermès neckties.

Conclusion

Making sense of this fragmented and diverse designer resale space poses unique challenges making addressing it all the more important for us at KURB. We specialise in understanding large and heterogeneous datasets related to designer resale clothing information. With the on-going surge in popularity of the space, the ecosystem is only set to get more and more treacherous, especially for those unfamiliar with the terrain. We hope that by bringing our knowledge accrued from traversing the space for over a decade, the process for someone to find what they’re looking for becomes easier. And that this brief outline on the landscape illustrates this and motivates you to continue your journey with a wider and sharper lens.