B2B – Wardrobe

Sustainable asset-recovery for fashion brands

To date, we’ve helped brands sustainably liquidate over 2.8MM items.

Wardrobe enables brands to thrive in resale by generating a new revenue stream through their non-restockable returned merchandize.

Re-commerce from returns

Wardrobe enables brands to sustainably and profitably liquidate their returned merchandise, while maintaining brand standards and providing unprecedented data insights and customer loyalty opportunities.

Customer returns are broken.

Over $100B of apparel returns inventory is sitting on retail balance sheets today. And it’s getting worse.

66%

Average cost to process an item’s return is 66% of its retail price.

> 25%

of returns were thrown away by retailers in 2019.

ESG metrics around disposal of unwanted merchandise matter now more than ever to stakeholders at every level.

Brands need a solution that is reliable, simple and sustainable.

Meet Wardrobe

Brands use our platform for these four benefits –

01

Sustainability: 100% of the items find a new purpose. 80% of items, regardless of condition, find a second life through a new, sustainability-conscious customer. The rest are recycled or downcycled.

02

Asset Recovery and Profitability: We provide a profitable way of disposing returns and use AI to find new customers for the merchandise. In addition, brands save on logistics, warehousing and carrying costs associated with returns.

03

Brand Management and Distribution: Returned merchandise’s assorted variety makes this inventory contain mostly one-off pieces that our AI uses to drive brand-discovery. Brands can specify geographic and platform distribution controls based on their brand care guidelines.

04

Analytics & Insights: All data – including metrics around condition, price, sales, customer profiles, earnings and sustainability – is visible in a customized dashboard for real-time insights and analysis.

Sustainability

Wardrobe circularizes the life of returned merchandise by selling to sustainability-conscious consumers who have the potential to become brand loyalists.

> 200%

Increase in returns sent to landfills since 2016. That’s 9.6BN lbs.

48M Tons

Of clothing are disposed worldwide every year

73%

Landfilled or incinerated

12%

Reused

<1%

Recycled into new clothes

Source: The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Circular Fibers Initiative 2017

Brand Management

With our expertise in brand management and care, our partners can feel confident that we will protect and support brand integrity throughout the liquidation process. Here’s how:

Varied merchandise

Returned merchandise has very limited reach because it contains small batch, one-off and assorted items. The benefit of our AI-powered platform is that it enables us to target a new customer instead of competing for the brand’s primary target. We screen for condition, map price and resell the small batch and one-off merchandise by facilitating discovery with secondary fashion customers. Additionally, brand partners can use promotional offers to convert this secondary market to full-price customers.

Distribution

We limit the distribution based on brands’ preferences so that resale does not conflict in any shape or form with the brands’ core customer strategy. Restrictions can be made to specific geographies (US, Can, UK, EU etc) and sales channels.

Retailers report that sustainability, revenue, and brand loyalty are the biggest benefits of resale

45%

of retail execs who offer resale say they’re satisfying investor demands around ESG.

Nearly 2 in 3

retailers who offer resale say resale will be integral to the company’s long-term growth strategy.

Nearly half

of retailers without a resale program say it’s critical to hire a third-party to manage it.

Top 3 benefits of resale programs reported by retailers -

Source: GlobalData Fashion Retailer Survey

How it works

We offer 2 models to seamlessly integrate with your existing logistics and take your returns

Resale

Using machine learning, we screen for condition, map, price and market, resell merchandise and send earnings to brands.

Sustainability

Items that cannot be sold are recycled. No items are ever discarded or sent to landfills.

Reporting & Analytics

All resale data is visible in one dashboard for insights on shoppers, product performance and quality.

Reporting and Insights

Access a direct data feed with regular customer lifecycle visibility into the secondary market.

As a comprehensive asset recovery solution, we specialize in maximizing the value of returned inventory assets. Whether its through consignment or direct purchase, Wardrobe recovers costs efficiently and predictably.

Our AI is powered by a proprietary mapping of 2.8MM fashion goods and 200+ brand, seasonality, and condition data points. To date, we’ve recovered approximately $25MM from returned merchandise.