PHOTO COURTESY OF WORN WEAR / PATAGONIA
Patagonia’s Worn Wear program is a leader in the rapidly expanding used-gear market.
Peak Design is a prime example of a niche brand that benefits from a dedicated customer base and thrives in a specialty online marketplace. According to a 2020 survey the brand circulated among its online customers, 27 percent of Peak Design shoppers own 10 or more of the company’s products, and half of its customers were already buying and selling used gear online before the Peak Design Marketplace was up and running. On the other end of the spectrum, large multibrand marketplaces target the masses, from casual shoppers to brand-dedicated diehards. REI’s Good and Used, which launched in 2018 with Trove handling some of the technical aspects of gear resale, is one such marketplace. Last June, both Cotopaxi and NEMO Equipment announced resale partnerships with the platform, which helped those brands achieve a quick entry into the space. Wooing New Customers Ken Voeller, REI’s director of circular commerce and new business development, says that beyond keeping existing outdoor gear in use longer, resale provides important avenues for customer acquisition and retention. “In 2021, we sold north of a million used units,” he says. “That’s up significantly from 2019 [the last year of ‘normal’ sales before the pandemic hit]. It lowers the barrier to
entry to getting outside, and we see our trade-in offering as a way [for customers] to stay engaged with REI.” This cost consideration is potentially transformative for higher-end brands like Arc’teryx, whose steep pricing is often a challenge for new-customer acquisition. Used gear lowers that barrier and is already proving successful with customer conversion, according to Arc’teryx VP of Recommerce Dominique Showers. “We are seeing tremendous engagement from a younger audience looking to enter into the outdoor activities we design for,” she says. And it’s not all online. Arc’teryx and Patagonia are both making efforts to bring usedgear sales into brick-and-mortar retail spaces. Arc’teryx recently opened its first ReBird store in New York City, which has a dedicated section for repairs and recommerce. Patagonia has integrated Worn Wear into various retail concepts—including two full-floor takeovers at stores in Brooklyn and Denver for the 2021 holiday season. The Climate Angle Environmental impact is another oft-touted benefit of used-gear resale—and those claims aren’t hot air. “The bulk of Patagonia’s emissions—95 percent—come from the supply chain, and most of that is material manufacturing,”
“The pre-owned
outdoor gear market is projected to balloon to roughly $75 billion by 2025.”
Agrawal says. “Through our Worn Wear program, we’ll continue to offer customers clothes with 60 percent lower emissions than new.” (See p. 70.) NEMO Global Distribution and Sustainability Manager Theresa Conn says that the company’s recent lifecycle assessment found that more than 80 percent of associated carbon impacts for a tent occurred before the product left the factory. “As the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions are tied up in the product itself,” she says, “our goal is to keep products in circulation for as long as possible.” Of course, this doesn’t take into account the bigger dilemma of developing an economically viable way for outdoor brands to produce less in the first place, which would prevent more emissions at their source. But building channels to keep gear circulating in the wild longer is definitely a step in the right direction. WINTER 2022
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