Cue the drum roll: Sandro is bringing its secondhand platform to the US. After launching Seconde Main in France last year, and in Germany in July, the French luxury retailer has debuted Sandro Secondhand in the US. The only difference is the US program is peer-to-peer, which allows customers to list and fulfill orders directly, as opposed to the managed-resale program the company operates in Europe. This is a first for Sandro and will essentially eliminate the need for the brand to physically clean, manage, photograph, and list the products.
While the European resale program includes both men’s and women’s RTW, alongside accessories, the American program is kicking off with womenswear only, with an eye toward expansion.
To launch the digital initiative, the retailer has partnered with Archive, a resale-tech company that builds customized resale marketplaces for brands and currently works with 26 other luxury retailers across the US, Canada, and Europe.
Isabelle Allouch, CEO of Sandro, told Retail Brew that the idea behind working with Archive was to make the process of reselling seamless and easy. “It takes just a few clicks to create a listing, and a prepaid shipping label is provided to the seller,” she explained. “Once an item is received, the seller will receive their choice of cash or credit towards their next Sandro purchase.”
- Sellers can get 70% of the selling price of the item if they pick cash, or 100% if they choose Sandro online shopping credit.
- Archive CEO Emily Gittins added the brand tested the tech with a few customers initially, and saw a great response, but it’s TBD on whether it will incorporate menswear and accessories in the near future.
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“The goal of this first phase is to really kind of learn about the buying and selling experience, see what products are selling, where there’s appetite, where there might be kind of flaws with products, that we can feedback with that data and insight to the Sandro team and then form a kind of future-looking strategy from there,” Gittins told Retail Brew, adding that the peer-to-peer model is different from its European counterpart since it is letting consumers list items directly and also fulfill orders directly to other customers.
“It’s a really great way to enter the market because there’s no upfront investment,” Gittins said. “You’re not kind of taking on a big overhead of taking back items; you’re not taking on any financial risk if things do sell.”
While only time will tell if its secondhand marketplace is a hit on the other side of the ocean, testing the peer-to-peer model in the US will also need to come with an understanding of the differences between European and American consumers.
For Gittins, the biggest one is the emphasis on sustainability which is “generally a little bit more advanced” for consumers in Europe and is furthered by government-led policies pushing brands to be more sustainable. “There’s a lot of policy and legislation that is coming that is requiring brands to take back items and have end-of-life solutions, so brands are really thinking about it from a protection standpoint, not just a business opportunity and sustainability standpoint,” she explained.—JS