Selfridges is aiming to boost its resale, repair, rental and refill interactions with customers in response to increasing demand for more sustainable shopping.
The upmarket department store group, which has one outlet in London, one in Birmingham and two in Manchester, wants 45% of its transactions to be based on resale, repair, rental or refill by 2030, the Guardian reported.
Last year, the retailer saw sales of second-hand items rise by 240% to 17,771 pieces, while it handled 28,000 repairs, more than a third of which were pairs of trainers, according to the report.
Meanwhile, it rented out more than 2,000 items to customers and sold more than 8,000 refills.
The group’s ‘Reselfridges’ initiative will form the “backbone of the business”, according to managing director Andrew Keith.
“We have got to commit to a significant and fundamental shift in the way we do business and use the platform of Selfridges for change,” he said.
The retailer’s new owners, the Thai conglomerate Central Group and Austrian real estate company Signa Holding, which completed the £4bn buyout from the Weston family this month, are “very excited” about the green plan, he added.
There has been a growing interest in second-hand fashion platforms such as Depop in the UK and The RealReal in the US, and the second-hand market is expected to grow faster than fast fashion in coming years.
In furnishings, Ikea and John Lewis have launched resale and rental services.
Selfridges will now offer repair services outside London, while rental will expand into new categories including kidswear, accessories, fine jewellery and menswear. Refills will also be made more widely available.
“The important thing is encouraging people to think how they can extend the life of a product,” Keith said. “We are enabling customers to add life into their wardrobes above and beyond buying new.”