Primark, the Irish low-cost fashion company, has partnered with Worn Well (The Vintage Wholesale Company) to introduce second hand clothing concessions into their flagship stores in Manchester and Birmingham (UK).
They are pioneering in a new fashion retail concept that will grow in the coming years, where new clothes and trends co-exist with second hand clothing corners.
The Vintage Wholesale Company supplies quality, used clothing in the UK and Europe. Primark new resale concession (Worn Well) will allow customers to shop branded and non-branded vintage and one-off items of clothing.
Jermaine Lapwood, head of innovation and future trends at Primark said “We want to see clothes loved for longer and kept in circulation – we’ve got big plans within our own business to give clothes a longer life.” Ricardo Seaton, founder of the Vintage Wholesale Company, added that “There are lots of benefits to shopping pre-loved and vintage but the best part is giving these items new life and seeing them worn for longer.”
Besides, the Worn Well project builds on a sustainability strategy that Primark started in September 2021, consisting of prolonging the life of garments, improving the supply chain and employing only sustainable or recycled materials over one decade.
Primark venturing into vintage clothing will allow the company to attain their sustainbilitaty goals and improve their brand perception, as the model of fast fashion needs to embrace the change and adapt to the requests of new customers and legislation toward sustainable fashion. It will also help the company capitalize on the outperformance of the resale apparel market, as this gets more and more adepts due to growing awareness.
In Tekstila we believe the resale market is here to stay and grow, as an opportunity to tackle the excessive clothing production and consumption, and as a key partnership between second hand and traditional fast fashion retailers. Our future depends on circular economy solutions, we make sure the stocks of clothing that are unsold at the end of each season reach their first use ever, and we hope to see more solutions like these partnerships between second hand and fast fashion retailers to achieve further circularity levels within fashion.