URBAN OUTFITTERS TO LAUNCH RESALE MARKETPLACE
Urban Outfitters, Inc (URBN) has introduced Nuuly Thrift, a resale marketplace launching in fall 2021 where anyone can buy or sell men’s, women’s, and kids’ apparel and accessories. Nuuly Thrift will be a sister platform to Nuuly Rent, the subscription rental service for women’s apparel, and both platforms will support the Nuuly brand’s mission to be a curated destination for anyone who loves fashion and is exploring how to wear, buy, and sell it in ways that are gentler on the planet—and on their wallets.
Nuuly Thrift isn’t only a marketplace for the URBN brands—customers will have the opportunity to resell products from any brand, and these products will be merchandised on the platform using a creative edit. When customers sell an item on Nuuly Thrift, they will have two options: transfer their earnings directly into their bank account, or redeem them for Nuuly Cash, which is worth 10 percent more at Nuuly Thrift and the URBN family of brands. For example: if a customer is paid $100 for a dress on Nuuly Thrift, that customer will have the option to convert it to $110 in Nuuly Cash, which can be spent back on Nuuly Thrift, or at Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters, BHLDN, or Terrain—online and in stores.
“URBN has been in the vintage renewal business since our founding in 1970,” said Richard A. Hayne, CEO and chairman of Urban Outfitters, Inc. “With the launch of Nuuly Thrift, we’re excited for URBN to capitalize on shifting customer behavior and gain market share in the rapidly expanding online resale market.”
The resale market is growing quickly and is a natural partner to rental. Nuuly’s end-of-life rental inventory will be sold through Nuuly Thrift, Nuuly Thrift will introduce new customers to Nuuly Rent and vice versa, and Nuuly Cash will incentivize customers from both platforms to continue to spend within the secondhand space, extending the lifespan of their clothing.
URBN customers are very active in the resale market, with three-quarters having made secondhand purchases and nearly half having sold secondhand items in the past year. Products from Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters are consistently the top-performing brands in resale markets. URBN will be able to encourage an active customer database of millions of customers across its brands to sell on Nuuly Thrift, and proceeds from sales on Nuuly Thrift will be redeemable as Nuuly Cash, which can drive incremental full-price sales back into the URBN family of brands.
“With URBN’s millions of existing customers, our merchandising and creative expertise, our deep technical capability, and the potential for Nuuly Cash to drive incremental purchases at our family of brands, we believe the stage is set to capitalize on a very large resale market opportunity,” added David Hayne, chief technology officer of URBN, and president of Nuuly. “Our goal at Nuuly is to build a creative marketplace community—built around a best-in-class technology platform—where customers can be fashion-conscious, eco-conscious and financially-conscious, all in one place.”
