Do you have old clothes that you no longer wear and which are sleeping at the bottom of a wardrobe?
Do you want to get rid of them without throwing them away?
No need to go very far.
Many supermarkets now offer to collect your old clothes so that they are sorted and then put back on sale.
In exchange for a filled bag, you even get a 5 euro voucher valid throughout the store.
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The first brand to have launched this initiative is Auchan.
“
We started with five stores, in February 2020,
” says David Decovemacker, director of partnerships at Auchan.
From September of the same year, the brand took the decision to extend the project to all its hypermarkets.
Today, 115 stores offer this service.
"
We serve as a collection point
," he continues, "
it's another company that is responsible for collecting and sorting the clothes sent by customers.
".
The latter have the choice of the container in which they collect the clothes, but to benefit from the voucher of 5 euros, it must include at least 10 articles.
For the moment, only hypermarkets are concerned.
But the project could soon be extended to smaller stores.
“
We have to analyze all of this with a bit of hindsight,
” says David Decovemacker.
Carrefour has also decided to engage in the circular economy with the second hand.
"
It's our role, as a major retailer, to democratize
it, " testifies Bertrand Swiderski, director of sustainable development for the group.
Currently, "
the collection system is in place in 130 Carrefour stores
," explains Frédéric Brossard, the brand's non-food marketing director, "
and customers say they are very happy with this initiative.
".
The two men say that their customers are attracted by both the financial and ecological aspect.
For Système U, around ten stores serve as a clothing collection point for their customers.
But from March 2022, a one-month operation will be launched in 150 stores of the brand, spread throughout the territory.
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The commitment of the retail brands that have joined this initiative is not limited to collecting clothes.
Most of them have also set up “
second-hand corners
”, small departments dedicated to second-hand fashion where their customers can buy “
clothes at low prices
”.
All Auchan hypermarkets offering the collection of old clothes have them.
"
The interest for us is to participate in the entire cycle, from collection to resale
" confides David Decovemacker.
On the Carrefour side, 27 stores sell second-hand clothes.
"
We offer items for women, men and children, all brands combined
explains Frédéric Brossard.
Indeed, clothing from brands such as Kiabi, H&M or Zara are very well represented.
Textile brands are also getting involved
Second-hand fashion also appeals to textile brands.
“
We believed in it from the start
,” says Xavier Prudhomme, general manager of the Bonobo brand.
“
With Vinted, people have realized that their clothes have value.
And they are right,
" he said.
Bonobo has been offering its customers the possibility of bringing their old clothes back to the store since last year.
Since then, all the other ready-to-wear brands of the Beaumanoir group (Cache-Cache, Bréal, Caroll, Morgan, etc.) have followed her.
Customers receive vouchers worth 1 euro for each patch, up to a limit of 15 euros per visit.
"
It's not to limit people, it's only to avoid that some bring whole wheelbarrows of clothes
laughs Xavier Prudhomme.
It must be said that Bonobo already retrieves around 150,000 articles per month.
“
Exceptional results
” for Xavier Prudhomme.
This model, already adopted by H&M since 2013, is also available at Kiabi or Promod.
Read alsoTextile: the difficult return of “made in France”
What then becomes of all these clothes collected by these supermarket and textile brands?
They are all sent to the biggest player in second-hand fashion in France: Patatam.
The company finances the transport costs of the clothes collected by the customers of its partner brands.
It is she who receives these clothes, sorts them and resells them.
“
We work with around 2,200 stores
,” says Éric Gagnaire, co-founder of Patatam.
"
And we get about 600,000 articles a month
," he adds.
Among these items, Eric Gagnaire says that on average, 60% of them are in a condition to be relisted.
They will be sold in particular in the "
second-hand corners
» Auchan or Carrefour hypermarkets.
The rest will be exported to Senegal, Ivory Coast or Gabon.
For now, Patatam has a monopoly in second-hand fashion.
But “
the market is open
” concludes Bertrand Swiderski, “
it is a sector of the future, set to develop with the creation of start-ups
”.
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