Up until now, women only have two options to pass on their wardrobe: donate to charities if they want as little effort as possible, or sell on marketplaces if they’d like to earn some money back for their preloved pieces. But a new startup is offering an alternative where women can still sell their secondhand fashion, without all the hassles associated with marketplaces.
SwapUp is an end-to-end online consignment platform that allows women to send in their items, while they do all the hard work of selling. Sellers simply send in their items and monitor their earnings, which can be used to cash out, donate or shop. Buyers enjoy a seamless (no pun intended) and reliable shopping experience through SwapUp’s online store website.
The consignment model has been around for many years, but the focus has been largely on the high-end segment.
“Luxury consignment is great, but it excludes everyday Australians who do not own any such luxury pieces,” says Alifa, the company’s CEO and co-founder. SwapUp wants to enable more people to be part of the circular economy.
A lifelong secondhand shopper, Alifa pivoted her career from sustainable transport to sustainable fashion when she learned that 85% of clothes donated are not sold. She realised that busy women do not have the time to sell their own clothes or trawl op shops and marketplaces to buy secondhand.
“We need to provide enough incentive so people value their clothes and take good care of them, while making the process of buying and selling as seamless as possible.”
Using automation to redistribute what’s existing, instead of producing more
SwapUp uses image recognition and pricing algorithms to effectively list, photograph, market, pick, pack, and ship one-of-a-kind items at scale. Further automation promises a better way of redistributing existing clothes.
“If we can use automation to produce more and more stuff, surely we can also use it to better distribute what we already have?” says Alifa, who, along with her co-founder Adi, is on a mission to make secondhand mainstream.
SwapUp is an online consignment and thrift store based in Sydney, Australia, offering thousands of unique preloved fashion items to choose from. The start-up was founded by Alifa Putri and Adi Nagara to make secondhand mainstream and reduce waste. For more info, please click here.
