Vestiaire Collective Talks Trust, Tradesy and Fighting Fast Fashion
PARIS — Vestiaire Collective is upping the authentication ante.
The world’s largest luxury resale platform has issued its first “trust report,” detailing its verification process. The company operates five centers: in France, the U.K., the U.S., Hong Kong and a newly opened facility in South Korea.
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In the report, Vestiaire Collective highlights a nearly perfect counterfeit detection rate, and says more than 360 million euros-worth of counterfeit items have been blocked from the platform. The company credits its 60 authentication experts worldwide, with each looking at 40,000 items per year — making that 1.5 million to pass through its centers since 2019.
Vestiaire Collective said it is working with the luxury brands to learn and train authenticators to spot details on the most sought-after items.
The company wanted in the report to give users more transparency, understanding and a deep dive into the specifics of its process.
“What does it mean when you say to people, to our community, ‘trust me’? Our mission is to be the most trusted and tasteful resale platform,” Vestiaire Collective cofounder and fashion director Sophie Hersan told WWD.
The timing is as perfect as a Swiss watch, with the company positioning itself as an authentication leader just as major players Amazon and eBay are making moves into the resale space.
Last week, Amazon announced it is getting into luxury resale through a partnership with What Goes Around Comes Around, and eBay said it is refocusing on the secondhand luxury market after its efforts to challenge Amazon’s broader e-commerce business came up short.
“Honestly, we are a pioneer, and so we have expertise and we know how to build the model, how to be more sustainable, how to fight against counterfeits,” Hersan said, underlining Vestiaire Collective remains a leader in the luxury resale space. She noted that when the company launched in 2009, it was partly in response to eBay’s then lack of a verification system for luxury goods.
“We wanted to do the opposite [at the time], because we didn’t trust the platform,” she said. “We are quite a bit advanced on the technology and on the human expertise [for authentication], and it’s super, super key that we have those high-level standards.”
Amazon is selling through a third-party partnership, while Vestiaire Collective works directly with brands, Hersan noted. That, she said, is one of the key strengths and positions the platform in a sweet spot with resale as a service through its brand partner program, launched in 2021.
That Vestiaire Collective has also baked sustainability into its mission is another added value for brands, Hersan explained. “We have a role to play in the ecosystem, and we have pushed since Day One for the industry to become more sustainable, which means we push to make brands join the circularity movement,” she said. “We see it as an expertise that is not easy [for brands]. They are more retail and linear businesses. We propose a solution to help them accelerate and be more engaged.”
Vestiaire Collective is working with the brands on digital ID technology and using blockchain to assist with the authentication process, said company chief operations officer Charles Bellois.
“It started with data and has come to more technology on the product element and on the product details,” he said. “We are continuing to invest in knowledge on the teams as well as making sure we have opportunities to use the technology, because we are also a technology company, and we want to make sure we stay on the forefront of that.”
Vestiaire Collective is working with several of the big companies on developing new tech methodologies that can be applied across brands, as well as unique applications for some of the most sought-after — and therefore most replicated — labels. That includes luxury education in their dedicated academy, which has more than 180 hours of training, Bellois said.
“It’s an ongoing race with the counterfeiters in order to implement [technology],” he said. “That’s why a lot of these companies are less transparent in sharing the technology to make sure that those technologies stay safe as long as possible.” Plus, they still believe in the human touch, with the quality-control team conducting a final check of items to make sure they meet Vestiaire’s standards for listing.
The next challenge will be accommodating an increase in volume, as Vestiaire Collective fully integrates Tradesy following the acquisition of the Los Angeles, California-based platform in March. That move will onboard Tradesy’s 7 million members by the end of 2022. While the integration of the two platforms has been “challenging,” Bellois said it is going “quite smoothly.”
The combined company will have 23 million users and move $1 billion of merchandise per year.
“The assortment was not that different from a luxury perspective. It’s true the demographic was different, and that’s why we were interested in this partnership.…There is bigger sales volume in the U.S., and we are consolidating, but user awareness and luxury offerings are strong,” he said, adding that most of the challenges are on the tech side rather than regarding company culture.
The increased sales volume after the Tradesy integration will necessitate a second authentication center in the U.S., although no opening date is set. Authentication requires extra shipping as items travel to centers first before being shipped to buyers, but the company says it will continue to prioritize local sales to minimize transport, reducing plastic and using recycled cotton bags in an effort to lower carbon emissions.
As digital ID technology develops, Vestiaire Collective says it will be better able to track how often items pass through its platform and just how circular sales really are.
While secondhand sales can still contribute to churn, Herson said Vestiaire’s work on authentication and quality counters any notions of overconsumption.
“The report is proving the inverse. With Vestiaire, we propose quality items with a curated catalogue. That means we propose items to last. We highlight craftsmanship. We propose high-end, desirable fashion. We fight against fast fashion,” she said. “We say: ‘Buy less, buy better.’ That’s why we do this curation on the platform and improve our authentication.”
