Secondhand clothes
That’s why they call me Second Hand Rose …
I’m wearing secondhand shoes
Secondhand hose
All the girls hand me their secondhand beaus …
Once while strolling through the Ritz, a woman got my goat
She nudged her friend and said, “Oh, look, there goes my last year’s coat!”
It seems poor old Rose of the early 1920s song, which got a secondhand revival in 1965 thanks to Barbra Streisand, really did feel a social stigma about never being able to own anything that was brand new. But is being unable to get your hands on the very newest and the best as dreadful as it is cracked up to be?
Those darlings of the so-called sharing economy – shared (read rental) bicycles – may have gone some way in convincing us that we do not need to own stuff to survive, let alone be happy. But just how far are we willing to go to disabuse ourselves of the notion that people will think more highly of us based solely on the glitzy new possessions we can show off?
Step forward Zhang Jun, 38, a fashion industry veteran who a couple of years ago came up with the idea of shaking up the industry by making the kind of clothing you only see on fashion show catwalks accessible to the masses. Of course, the expression “came up with the idea” is used rather loosely here because – in a way that Rose would no doubt appreciate – the idea was in fact a hand-me-down from others.
Those others were Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, two graduates of Harvard Business School who nine years ago set up a company in the United States called Rent the Runway, which provides rental services for designer dresses, apparel and accessories. The idea for the company, Hyman and Fleiss say, was an encounter between Fleiss and her sister Becky on Thanksgiving Day in 2008. Becky showed off a $2,000 (1,750 euros; ￡1,560) dress she had bought to go to a wedding but lamented that she had to go into debt to buy it.
Fleiss pondered whether it would make a lot more sense for people to rent designer items rather than buy them, and when she returned to Harvard after the holiday, she mentioned the idea to Hyman.
The company was initially an e-commerce-only operation, but it has since opened brick-and-mortar shops in New York, California, Illinois and Washington, DC.
Last year, after 16 years in the industry, during which time Zhang had been a department store manager and a brand manager and had started an e-commerce business, he went to Silicon Valley in California, scouting for ideas.
Zhang had become jaded by the fashion world, feeling that something was missing, that it was beginning to show its wear and tear.
“Looking back at my career, I realized what I wanted was to rediscover the innovation that is the very basis of the fashion industry and keeps it moving.”
In Silicon Valley, Zhang was fortunate to run into Hyman and Fleiss, who told him of how they had watched clothes-sharing – an idea that a decade earlier might have seemed preposterous in the richest country on the planet – become part of the fabric.
What Zhang learned from the pair was that there were many more consumer hot buttons to be pushed than the very practical idea of being able to rent dresses. For example, Zhang says, hanging in many a closet is stark evidence of economic short-term thinking: expensive dresses, jackets and coats that do not earn their keep because they have only been worn once or twice.
What also makes the argument for renting clothes so compelling, Zhang says, is at least two other things. First, luxury goods are becoming ever more expensive, which means the pool of those able to afford them is shrinking. Second, fashion trends are changing rapidly, such that an expensive, top-of-the-range, up-to-date item bought one year can be regarded as yesterday’s stuff the following year.
Rent the Runway Unlimited subscribers pay $159 (139 euros; ￡124) a month, against which they can borrow up to four pieces of clothing and accessories a month. Subscribers can select from an inventory of more than 450,000 items stacked with designer labels, and they can keep whatever they order as long as they want. They also have the option of buying such an item, usually for half the retail price.
So after Zhang returned from Silicon Valley, he set up StarLuxe, an online luxury goods rental service company, in Shanghai.
“I was very excited, not just about the basics of buying and selling, but about this totally new concept of doing business,” Zhang says.
Zhang’s confidence in his project is bolstered, too, by evidence of Chinese consumers’ taste for luxury. Chinese consumers spent more than 500 billion yuan ($72 billion; 62 billion euros; ￡55 billion) on luxury items last year, and Chinese buy one-third of the world’s luxury goods, according to international consultancy McKinsey& Co.
The annual reports of several luxury goods groups have also described China as the strongest growth region, and the rate of growth shows no signs of abating, the McKinsey report said. This means that by 2024, China will account for 40 percent of the world’s luxury goods spending.
StarLuxe says that more than 40 percent of those who begin using its services are already luxury goods high rollers, spending more than 200,000 yuan a year on luxury items, and only 25 percent of its users are what might be regarded as ordinary consumers, with salaries between 10,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan a month.
This suggests that rental luxury clothing encourages heavy spenders to spend even more and coaxes less-well-off consumers who would otherwise spend nothing into the fold.
Those kinds of figures, too, seem to have found ready eyes and ears in those who could be pivotal in helping this industry not only get off the ground but also thrive and survive. StarLuxe received startup funding appropriate to its name this year when Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi invested 60 million yuan in the venture.
“We have a mission: to change people’s spending habits,” Zhang Jun says.
In so doing, customers can have access to more quality products at a lower cost and, even as they reduce the wasteful use of resources and add a warm eco-friendly glow to their enjoyment of luxury, he says.
That luxury is not limited to clothing, taking in handbags, suitcases, household supplies and even technology such as drones that can be delivered within a few hours of being ordered.
In all of this Zhang does not, of course, have the field all to himself. His rivals include apps through which similar services are offered, such as Baozupo and Youmiao, both of which give owners of luxury handbags the opportunity to rent them out to others.
Zhang says that one of his initial concerns was that this sharing concept would be too radical for most people, but in market research that he commissioned, 90 percent of those in his target group, women aged 25 to 40 in tier one cities, declared their support for the idea.
One of the survey respondents compared renting luxury goods to staying in a hotel, he says.
“She said that in hotel rooms, bedsheets and coverings will have been used by others, but she still enjoys spending time in these places because of the fresh experience of staying somewhere far from home, and she enjoys the pampering that the hotels offer.”
Yi Lingna, 39, of Beijing, is a dedicated follower of fashion and a regular customer of luxury goods rental services.
She frequently scours StarLuxe’s many new and limited editions, and by renting things, she saves space in her home, she says. She also rents bags and watches for her husband.
“I’m a Taurus (purportedly someone who is extremely careful in financial matters), so I’m keen to spend the least amount of money for the greatest number of goods.”
However, for the many thousands who have been converted by the gospel of luxury goods-sharing, there are plenty of others who remain unconvinced about this new economic model.
Lin Han, 25, of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, says she owns more than 30 luxury goods items each costing more than 10,000 yuan and is repelled by the idea of anybody but her leaving a crease or mark on anything she owns.
“I think I’d even lose sleep over it. I just can’t entrust my babies (handbags) to anyone else.”
Even being compensated financially for damage to rented items or having them repaired or replaced would be inadequate, she says.
“It’s just not the same.”
Chen Ting, 32, of Shanghai, says renting luxury goods is not the only way of trying to patch up the gaping holes that they can leave in a buyer’s pocket.
“Apart from well-known brand names such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci, anyone who is keen on following fashion can look to many niche designer brands. More important, the stuff these designers sell has a smaller number on the price tag.”
At the moment, StarLuxe serves customers in Shanghai and Beijing only, and Zhang says it has more than 10,000 regular users, 10 percent of whom have paid a membership fee that entitles them to a discount on rental fees and a waiver on deposits and delivery fees.
“We’re not making money at the moment,” Zhang says.
“Right now, it’s a matter of changing people’s lifestyles, just as the online payment service Alipay and the e-commerce platform JD have been trying to do. Over the years, they have lost a lot of money, but it’s the economies of scale in the future that they have their eye on.”
Zhang seems to be convinced that the changes he is looking for in the way people think about buying luxury goods are well on the way.
“Over the past few years, the pace of change in the luxury goods industry has become faster and faster. People used to buy these things to show off their status; now they’re simply enjoying the pleasure of keeping up with fashion trends.”
|
Luxury renting encourages big spenders to spend even more and coaxes into the fold the less well-off who would otherwise spend nothing. Photos Provided to China Daily |
|
Chinese buy one-third of the world’s luxury goods, and last year they spent more than $72 billion on them. |
( China Daily European Weekly 11/23/2018 page1)