Redefining the Resell Vintage Market
A love for second hand.
Ever since moving to San Francisco, my love for thrifting vintage and second hand clothes has grown tremendously. San Francisco is a leader in sustainable fashion by being home to many amazing brands such as: All birds, Everlane, Tonle, Cuyana, and so many more, but also having incredible collections of vintage and thrift stores all throughout the city.
For this week’s project, I wanted to focus on the Resell Market and the process of selling and swapping clothes. Not only have I put on clothing swaps with my own friends, I am constantly selling my clothes to these stores and shopping there. I wanted to look at the current model of reselling clothes and how that can change. Three models that came to mind to dive into are: selling clothes in person, selling clothes online, and swapping clothes with others. Below is a user flow for all three.
Resell User Flow: (Selling in Person, Selling Online, Swapping Clothes)
After identifying the current user flow I’ve decided to try Brainstorming using the ‘How Might We’ method as well as looking at the SCAMPER method and quickly see what ideas can come to mind.
HMW Brainstorming:
- How might we sell clothes digitally?
- How might we sell clothes in person?
- How might we swap clothes in person?
- How might we price these clothes?
- How might we make it fair for everyone joining?
- How might we combine our digital stores in person selling?
- How might we combine QR codes with selling / swapping in person?
- How might we validate the price of the clothing?
- How might we attach descriptions to clothing?
- How might we quantify what we want our price to be?
- How might we be able to get the price we’re hoping too? Or make the best profit?
- How might we make the trade fair?
- How might we view if the clothes are in good condition?
- How might we find the space to trade the clothes?
- How might we get folks to sign up?
- How might we keep changing up the inventory?
- How might we make the uploading on apps process easy?
- How might we do a bulk?
- How might we take photos of pieces and have it match to items on the internet? (Affirm’s Feature)
- How might we make this process social and fun?
- How might we make it easy to swap clothes digitally?
- How might we get our items priced right? (sometimes the buyer doesn’t know pricing or a brand)
- How might we be able to ship our clothing to a store that takes the photos and sells our clothes?
- How might we be able to consign our pieces?
- How might we have buyers view your pieces online and then buy from you, rather than you having to carry them to the store?
SCAMPER Brainstorm
Substitute
- Substitute the pricing by the buyer and instead you’re able to show your own research and pricing for the item — creating fair pricing for the user.
Combine
- Combining in person selling with online, being able to show your online closet to a store in person to find the right price.
Adapt
- Using QR code to easily scan the codes to know more about the piece and its original price.
Modify
- Instead of having one person host a closet swap, spaces or companies can help put on swaps, and rent out spaces for you to bring your clothes, price them and be able to swap with others for thesame price of clothing.
Eliminate
- The buyers valuation
- The buyers incorrect valuation
- Waiting to sell your pieces
- Having to sell in person or take photos of your pieces
Put to another use
- Spaces
- Shipping
- QR Codes
- collections of clothing
Reverse
- Start with shipping the clothes, then the app pricing and uploading it for you and paying you out for the clothes.
Gaps or Problems with the Current Model
- Selling in person is a long and tedious process
- Your items aren’t fairly priced
- You never know what pieces the buyers will choose from your items.
- No option to ship clothes to stores and have them buy from you immediately.
- Clothing Swaps aren’t organized on large scales.
- QR Codes aren’t used at all
- Easy way to upload pieces to apps.
- Integrate online and in person selling in some way.
Idea #1 Combining Digital & In Person Selling
Buyers (Crossroads, Wasteland, Buffalo Exhange) are able to view sellers clothes online, through their online profiles by having them submit them to their website, then invite them in to bring specific pieces which they can immidaitely buy and buy for a fair price. Buyers will then look at the pieces in person and determine if the price is fair and then pay the seller out. This removes the pain of the seller carrying clothes to these stores and not knowing which pieces they will end up buying.
Sellers also have the option to ship these items in and get validated and paid out.
Idea #2 Clothing Swap on Large Scale
A hosting company that access to a large warehouse has a website where sellers pay a small fee to be able to bring your clothes and set up. Other sellers who are interested are able to attend and join the event. Each seller is given a QR code to upload items showing the description for the piece, sizing, condition, and pricing. Sellers are able to add each item to their cart and try to make fair trades for each item they’ve traded.
Idea #3 Easy Clothes Upload
Sellers are able to use a camera function to be able to take photos of their clothes which then finds the right item online and uploads photos of your clothes along with details, pricing etc, to your online store on Depop, Poshmark, Object Limited, etc making the uploading process easier and more streamlined.
The idea I fell in and love with and went with was having clothing swaps happening on a large scale. This currently doesn’t exist on a large scale and would be a great way to reduce clothing waste and help recycle the beautiful pieces in our wardrobe while promoting sustainability.
For this prototype I decided to create wireframes in Balasmiq, since it’s a fun and playful way to show my process. I built this idea over two different devices since there is an element of signing up before the swap and during the swap.
Users would sign up for Clothing Swappers, fill out an onboarding form to find clothing swaps near them and have a personalized dashboard with clothing swaps by genre and city. They can then choose a swap, which shows who will be attending and other attendees collections, the user can then sign up and pay the fee for the swap.
Prior to the Swap the users need to upload their pieces and the price of each item, or they can do a bulk upload from other apps such as: Depop, Poshmark, Instagram, GOAT, etc.
On the day of the Swap users will be given an area to set up their pieces and store. They will use Clothing Swappers mobile app and have a personalized QR code to scan and shop to keep track of their swaps and snags. Users are easily able to carry over any savings to next Swaps!
Takeaways
I’ve appreciated learning about HMW and the SCAMPER brainstorming techniques, these techniques inspired me to think beyond what’s right in front of me. I knew there was a gap in the current resell market, but I wanted to figure out a way to make it fun and interactive, while changing up the idea of shopping. This way consumers are swapping their clothes and not necessarily spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars for new items.
During prototyping stages I wanted to make sure I included an element of onboarding to design that personalized dashboard for each swapper, I think that’s an important part of apps like these, the data needs to be relevant to the user. I also wanted to make sure that, the day of the swap it was easy for swappers to exchange clothes, so the idea of using a QR code makes it super simple to track.
I would have liked to build the QR code flow itself, or what exactly would happen once a QR code is scanned and how to keep track of your swaps and snags, but I think the skeleton for the idea exists.
If I could do this all over again, I would try to use a brainstorming deck that might inspire me on the topic of choice, example: fashion related deck for this project. I would have also loved to move into hifidelity designs as well since I truly think this solves a problem and brings lovers of fashion all together!