Vestiaire Collective launches in Korea to take secondhand shopping to the next level

Life & Style

Published: 08 Jun. 2023, 19:58

Vestiaire Collective launches in Korea to take secondhand shopping to the next level

Vestiaire Collective's co-founders Sophie Hersan, left, and Fanny Moizant, center and Korea Country Manager Minah Lee [PARK SANG-MOON]

Buying and selling secondhand goods online has recently gained momentum in Korea. While it was likely initiated by the pandemic, the trend has now established itself as a new consumption culture in the country that used to have some sort of stigma around used items or a perception that such goods were reserved for thrifty shoppers.

Platforms for secondhand goods like Danggeun Market and Bungaejangter have seen a whopping increase in their number of users and transactions in Korea. This surge did not go unnoticed and Vestiaire Collective, a pre-loved fashion platform from France, decided to enter into one of the fastest-growing fashion markets in the world.

Vestiaire Collective was launched in Paris in October 2009. It now has more than 25 million members across 80 countries with offices across the globe, including in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul. The launch in Korea received great attention, certainly from fashionistas who were already using the global app to get their hands on high-end vintage items. It was funded by Korelya Capital, a venture capital founded by former French digital economy minister Fleur Pellerin, backed by Korea’s internet giant Naver.

“I’m glad that Danggeun Market was there first because it educated Korean users on how big and how possible it is for them to just go into the secondhand market,” said Minah Lee, Vestiaire Collective’s Korea Country Manager.

Vestiaire Collective's Korean app [VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE]

Vestiaire Collective’s Korea service launched in July last year and has been working hard to localize the operation side of the business, including the app, the payment, the login and the shipping systems. Lee says her team is now “ready to actually have a larger audience come in and check out what Vestiaire Collective is all about.

“The two platforms — Danggeun Market and Bungaejangter — I believe made secondhand transactions more legitimate and transparent and sustainable. I think it helped Vestiaire to enter into the market. What sets it apart, however, is that Vestiaire only does designer and luxury fashion and it’s currently the only platform that offers global secondhand fashion with authentication,” said Lee.

Having that confidence in buying a real item has always been an issue here when making secondhand transactions online. Lee believes Vestiaire’s authentication service is really well suited for the needs of Korean consumers. Vestiaire has a team of 80 experts working across five authentication centers. Its latest location is in Seoul.

The newly-recruited team had to undergo at least 750 hours of training in France in the Vestiaire Academy to become authenticators.

According to Lee, the past year has been all about localizing the app, getting the administrative side ready so that transactions, international shipping and cross-order tax issues can all be taken care of by the Korean team.

“Now we are ready to take it to the next level and invite fashion followers and have a wider reach this time and really send the message across of Vestiaire’s core value, which includes sustainability,” said Lee.

Vestiaire Collective may look no different to any other online resale platform, except that it only handles high-end. But it’s never been just about fashion. Its mission and vision from birth has been to “transform the entire fashion industry for a sustainable future,” said Fanny Moizant, one of the co-founders.

Vestiaire Collective Korea's flea market event on April 22 [VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE]

Two co-founders of Vestiaire Collective - Moizant and Sophie Hersan - recently visited Korea for a flea market event it hosted on April 22 in Sinsa-dong, southern Seoul, to meet with the members of the Vestiaire Collective’s Korean community.

Influencers who have already become sellers on the platform brought their luxury items to sell offline. Moizant and Hersan also brought their own items from Paris, hoping that their treasured goods can live on with a new owner.

During their visit to Seoul, the Korea JoongAng Daily sat down with the three empowering women in style to hear about the real deals behind Vestiaire and its new Korean office.

In Hersan’s memory, Vestiaire began with a simple question: Why do we own so many clothes and bags we don’t wear in our vestiaire, or a wardrobe, in French?

This issue was especially for Hersan who had accumulated quite a wardrobe while working in fashion, as studio manager for many designers like Marni, Alaia and Dior. Both Hersan and Moizant, as Parisians, noticed too many items filling their closets and so decided to confront their overconsumption of clothing.

“Many of them were timeless pieces and it was such a waste that they were just sitting there, not being worn. So we began to sort out our wardrobes, sort out what I really need, what I really wear and got a big pile of what we should sell,” said Moizant.

The two founders reduced their wardrobes, became the first two sellers of the platform, which they named Vestiaire Collective. It was valued at $1.7 billion last year. Now it has an inventory of 5 million items — allowing its members to purchase quality secondhand items that range from Cartier watches and Chanel bracelets to Fendi jackets and Gucci mules that have been authenticated by Vestiaire.

A team of Vestiaire Collective's authenticators [VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE]

Vestiaire has a team of 80 experts working across five authentication centers. Its latest location is in Seoul. An authentication experts checks a Cartier watch. [VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE]

“We wanted to propose a new way of consumption,” said Hersan. “When we looked at our own closets, we found out that we were wearing only 20 percent. In other words, fashion brands are basically driving people to buy more than they need and the fashion industry is run by excess and over production.”

In order to cope with such an excess of fashion waste, a sustainable solution was necessary, which was to extend the lifespan of pre-loved quality items.

“Vestiaire Collective is a platform to enable fashion lovers to buy better and not waste. Not to keep things in the wardrobe and to help your fashion items live a longer life. At the same time, we thrive for quality, craftsmanship and really love fashion and its creativity. In that sense, we hate fast fashion,” said Moizant.

In fact, Vestiaire made a bold move last year and decided to ban fast fashion on its platform for good. Moizant says the percentage of fast fashion items being sold and purchased was not that high, but the company still decided to set a new standard for itself to really control the quality.

“It was also a debate within the company because you can’t sell the stuff in your wardrobe if they are from such brands. But I think the philosophy behind us is to really educate consumers in the community that such behavior of buying low quality product creates the waste you see today.”

As for the Korean service, Lee decided not to allow users to freely sell any kind of brands from the beginning.

“Instead of having a big wave of all different types of fast fashion brands, we decided to curate it and have a long list of Korean and international designer brands that we accept to control the quality,” said Lee. “I think it’s better for us to keep that gate closed instead of letting everything come in because Korea has so many different fast fashion brands of our own and even online brands.”

The photograph shows Moizant and Hersan's trip to Ghana's Kantamanto, where they encountered a large pile of old clothes that were shipped in from western countries. [VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE]

Moizant and Hersan even took a trip to Kantamanto in Ghana last year to witness firsthand what happens to all the clothes that get thrown into recycling bins.

“Consumers don’t really know what happens to them. We didn’t really know. We think we are doing something good by putting the old clothes in the recycling bin and think they end up somewhere in Africa,” said Moizant. “There is a secondhand clothing market and sellers going through piles of such clothes imported to the country to make a living [...] But the quality of the clothes is so poor that we heard more than 40 percent of what they purchase ends up in the bin. And since it’s not a developed country, the infrastructure to process them [the clothes] is not there. There are no big landfills or recycling factories so where do they end up? Everywhere, on the beach, in the sewers, in the ocean. It’s such a big environmental issue and a nightmare.”

That is why achieving B Corp certification — a label that certifies companies that meet high social and environmental standards — was important for Vestiaire. It is the first secondhand fashion platform in the world to achieve the status.

“Sustainability has been one of the core values and pillars since the beginning of Vestiaire,” said Hersan. “But we couldn’t really say that in the beginning because we didn’t want to look like greenwashers.”

“We achieved the certification in 2021 and got to be more bold in sending the sustainability message to the world that this is something we are very serious about. That this is the mission of the company,” said Moizant. “Users of the platform don’t necessarily have to buy or sell. All those who love fashion can come in and be inspired by others, share their stories and help raise awareness that a circular and sustainable form of fashion consumption can actually help save the planet.”

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]