Zalando launches pre-owned in two markets, more to come next month

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 21, 2020

Zalando shoppers in Germany and Spain can now buy and trade-in pre-owned fashion directly on the platform with Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Poland to follow next month, the company said on Monday.

The European online fashion giant had originally announced its pre-owned plans back in February, but with the pandemic having happened since then, pre-owned has taken on a new topicality for its sustainability and its budget-conscious focus.

The new offer makes the products available to millions of customers across Europe. 

“Interest in pre-owned fashion is high and growing, especially among millennials,” the company’s VP of Recommerce, Torben Hansen, said. “At the same time, customers are missing an easy and reliable service that combines it all: effortless trading-in of items they no longer wish to wear, and an enjoyable online shopping experience for pre-owned fashion. With the launch of pre-owned, Zalando is the first fashion platform to offer such a seamless solution and tackle these customer needs at scale”.

It comes with an update to the wishlist feature in the Fashion Store so customers now automatically see all articles they’ve bought on Zalando and can also upload items they already own, but have bought elsewhere, “to trade them in with just a few clicks”. 

Customers can choose to either receive a Zalando gift card in the respective amount or support charities once their pre-owned items have sold.

All of the pre-owned items offered on the site are “quality-checked and curated into an ever-fresh assortment,” we’re told.

The company is also piloting plastic-free packaging for all orders from the pre-owned category and using recycled paper instead.