Emergency climate. Revolution technological. Pandemic† in crisis raw materials. The collapse of shipping. shortcomings. guerrilla. Breakdown of the energy market. Inflation not seen for several generations. These are very brief. main pitfalls has had to circumvent almost all economic sectors in recent years. Some, like the auto industry, are unlucky enough to suffer the consequences of all these disruptions at once. Although it is difficult to find an activity that stands outside of the recent setbacks of world trade, it is undoubtedly an extreme situation. But it’s there.
The second-hand market is alive, as if the current situation was designed by the professionals of the second-hand industry. golden age by establishing itself as a practical alternative to each of the existing conditioning factors. Environmental targets face circular economy and resource savings. Facing the raw material and transportation crisis, already manufactured and domestic products. And in the face of rising prices, earn extra income by selling what is no longer used.
The tailor-made suits, in which complex reality creates them, are used by many of the industry’s leading companies to show their figures. Wallapop or Cash Converters They recently launched two campaigns in which they advocate the benefits of their business model in the face of the climate emergency. “It’s done” and “No more premieres” are advertising slogans starring the vast majority of teens and twenties.
And this younger generations They are the great champions of the second hand. According to the Consumer Trends 2022 study, translated into Spanish by the Samy Alliance, those born between 1995 and 2005 in the so-called Generation Z think twice as much as a baby boomer in America. resale options of the article they will get before buying.
Although a practice on the rise, the report encrypts the ‘explosion’ of second-hand since the pandemic. 33 million new customers Entering this market since 2020, with more than 6,500 million products resold worldwide savings of approximately 4,000 million euros and 52,000 million kilos of CO2. In addition, the study shows that 76% of first-time users plan to increase their spending in the coming years and expect this industry to increase its turnover fivefold by 2027.
In Spain, some big companies in the sector confirm the good days of second hand. They point out from Wallapop that in “times of uncertainty” like the current one, it’s common for the PR person at Vinted to experience an “increased interest” in reused products. Eleonora Porta. more responsible consumption.
Cash Converters growing by opening locations in Turkey Carrefour, MediaMarkt or Auchanit also highlights an increase in activities that determine both the price factor and environmental benefits.
And while the economic situation helps, great allies of the second hand are the youth and the ecological transition. Another Ipsos report on climate change and consumer habits concludes that more than half of Spaniards have changed the way they shop for environmental reasons. When asked about concrete actions, the fifth most repeated answer was “buy less new products”, chosen by almost a third.
He knows a lot about this slowdown in the consumption rate. fashion industry, one of the most receptive ones lately. “What is known as fast fashion is a response to fashion that is super polluting, which consists of a throwaway fashion due to poor quality and outdated designs,” he explains. David Carcassonne, representative of several Italian companies in Spain. Professional says such second-hand stores are popping up “like mushrooms,” adding that “brands that keep making new products are trying to implement forms of production that are less aggressive towards the planet.”
The foresight of the textile industry is in this direction. Second-hand clothing will double fast fashion by 2030. “It’s not a question of savings, because that’s often not the case,” explains Carcassonne, in many cases “customers are looking for some kind of second-hand clothing that they can no longer buy today, or because of materials, for qualities or designs. And that pays off”.
This massive evolution of the case has opened up giants who theoretically have nothing to do with second-hand to this application. This is the case with Ikea, which has been providing a furniture buyback service since 2016 to “prolong the useful life” of its products, to “help the environment and allow many people to buy affordably”. monica kao, the Swedish firm’s Sustainability Director. According to this chaosThanks to these and other initiatives, Ikea has succeeded in giving a second life to more than 11.5 million pieces of furniture.
But not everything can be associated with looking after the planet. There are sectors where trading is increasing rapidly for reasons unrelated to ecology. what is this going with cars and with game station. A priori, a car and a game console have very little in common. However, both harbor a large number of microchips in their guts, and the scarcity of these components creates serious bottlenecks in the production of these products, crashing the first-hand market and triggering the second-hand market.
The PlayStation example is the most extreme. Sony released the latest version of this console more than two years ago, but the start of the semiconductor crisis, remittances are irregular and very limited. There were two prices, depending on the benefits: 399 and 499 euros. But due to this scarcity, it is resold on second-hand platforms for prices starting at 600 Euros, giving some users the opportunity to speculate. The demand is such that some groups have been created on Telegram, an instant messaging app, that already have more than 60,000 followers that alert when a store’s stock is replenished.
Nor does ecology have anything to do with growth. used vehicle sales. In 2021, only 850,000 new cars were registered in Spain, 32% less than in 2020, while around two million used cars were sold, or 9% more. Here, electrification skepticism is compounded by the paucity of new cars, but the biggest gain has been the second-hand market, where prices have soared due to high demand.