For some of the “left to cover an area, abandoned the pity” of the old things, the best source of nature is second-hand idle trading platform. However, as people’s consumption concept changes, it is not only cheap and idle items that are being resold, but also second-hand luxury goods that are selling like hot cakes.

Data showed that 2.2 million Chinese consumers visited overseas medieval stores online during the 618 holiday, with global brands such as Louis Vuitton LV, Hermes and FENDI among the favorites. RECLO’s overseas flagship store has sold more than 6 million yuan.

Behind the hot sales of second-hand luxury goods in China is a blue sea of ten billion yuan. According to The “Overview of China’s Second-hand Luxury Industry in 2021” by Toubao Research Institute, the scale is expected to reach 24.8 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound growth rate of 15%.

At a time when the market is bursting with great potential, more and more capital is ending up. For example, the second-hand luxury live e-commerce channel brand “Princess Fish” completed a SERIES B financing of 30 million DOLLARS in early June, and the second-hand luxury trading platform “Only Two” completed a series C financing of tens of millions of dollars in May.

At the same time, there are also giants began to fall sub-layout. As a dark horse of Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce, “Kaolahai Shopping” has been collaborating with two Japanese medieval stores — “Dahei House” and “RECLO” in the past month.

So, billions of second-hand luxury market can hold up the future of how much? At the moment into the game of second-hand luxury track koala overseas shopping, and how much imagination? What new ideas will “big black room” bring to the industry?

Second-hand luxury is the new favorite of generation Z

Contemporary young people are increasingly pursuing quality life.

Before the class a yoga to relax, the class fruit, snacks constantly to achieve the “cherry freedom”, at home at night to drink a glass of craft fruit wine or sparkling wine.

Faced with the fast pace of life and countless trips to the subway every day, young people have learned to enjoy life and enjoy the moment, hoping to have a leisure time that highly fits the soul world after the stressful work.

Born in 1995, Xiao Yang is such a delicate girl. Apart from spending her leisure time every day, she also pays great attention to her clothes and collocation, such as gucci bag or Chanel watch when she goes out and goes to work.

But why can a post-1995 generation with a modest income buy a branded bag or watch?

In fact, Xiao Yang mostly buy second-hand luxury goods, in her collection folder, collection of many medieval stores. Such stores enter e-commerce, selling second-hand luxury goods, the price can be as low as 12 discount than the original price, that is to say, a LV bag of tens of thousands of yuan can be bought at the price of thousands of yuan.

With low price and high cost performance, second-hand luxuries naturally become the “new favorite” of young people who pursue quality life but whose income is not too high.

According to the Research Report on the Development of China’s Second-hand Luxury Market 2020, in 2020, the proportion of young people aged under 19 and 19-29 buying second-hand luxury goods is 11% and 13% respectively, while consumers aged 29-36 are still the main buyers, accounting for 52%. However, nearly 40 percent of those from generation Y (born between 1980 and 1995) and 60 percent of those from Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2009) buy used luxury goods once to three times a year.

It can be seen that generation Z is becoming the main consumption force of second-hand luxury goods. Most of them believe that buying second-hand luxury goods can not only satisfy their desire to buy the desired brand style, but also save money and have a high cost performance. This kind of consumption pattern, which is similar to circular and economical, gives second-hand luxury goods more space for development.

According to “Overview of China’s Second-hand Luxury Industry in 2021” by Toubao Research Institute, the scale of China’s second-hand luxury market was only 5.85 billion yuan in 2016, and rose to 17.3 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound growth rate of 31.3%. In addition, according to the “Research Report on the Development of China’s Second-hand Luxury Market 2020” jointly released by Youluxury Auction and University of International Business and Economics, the second-hand luxury transaction volume in China only accounts for 5% of the consumption in the luxury market, far lower than 28% and 31% in Japan and the United States.

In other words, China’s second-hand luxury market has great potential, and the lack of market penetration has become the key point for capital entry.

The blue ocean of the industry is in need of a guide

Looking at the financing situation of domestic second-hand luxury enterprises, most of them have completed a new round of financing. Only in February may completed tens of millions of DOLLARS of C round financing, The Fish has completed 30 million DOLLARS of B round financing, Fat tiger completed 50 million dollars of C round financing.

Players continue to get capital support, is the industry unicorn prototype has not yet appeared, still belongs to the savage growth, the stage of fragmentation. But the player financing grabs the share of the present, but it is easy to ignore a key point – “genuine guarantee”.

In the early stage of development of the industry, major second-hand luxury goods trading platforms will inevitably be shoddy, difficult to distinguish true from false, lack of after-sales service, inadequate supervision and other phenomena. However, second-hand luxuries are still “luxuries” for generation Z with low income, so there is no denying the importance of “authenticity guarantee”.

At present, most of the second-hand luxury goods trading platforms in the market use the identification means of Zhongpi Group, such as red cloth, dewu, goods identification, etc., and zhongpi have established a long-term cooperative relationship.

And the use of third-party institutions to do testing has great limitations: different testing institutions get different test results, it is easy to fall into the “Rashomon”.

Like the previous “VipSHOP VS Object Gucci belt is true or false” event, both sides hold their own words, each has testing evidence. So far it has not been decided whether the belt is genuine.

Vipshop stated, “Gucci belt is directly purchased from overseas. The purchasing link is clear, reliable and legal, ensuring authenticity.” Dewu said, “The belt has been authenticated by four third-party authentication platforms, including Zhongjian, PONHU, Yousha And Pinsha, all of which were authenticated as counterfeit or failed to pass the authentication.”

But why does belt still cannot judge genuine?

According to insiders, the reason is that luxury goods are not standard products, and only the brand has the right to make the final judgment. So far, brands end up with a few cases of personal identification. In addition, the experience of the inspectors is different, so the test results from different testing platforms are likely to be different or incorrect.

Therefore, there is no result on the authenticity of ViPSHOP Gucci belt. It also revealed that testing institutions are limited by the experience and qualification of testing personnel, and even if they provide authentic certificates, they may also make detection errors because of some non-standard luxury goods.

Who should consumers trust in such a situation? Therefore, the second-hand luxury industry’s control over genuine products cannot be solved by one or two institutions. It needs to be improved by industry standards, regulations or other ways.

In order to deal with the status quo of this industry, Kaola overseas shopping has found another way to solve the problem. Apart from introducing Zhongji and Zhongchang, kaola has also cooperated with two large Medieval stores in Japan, “Dahei House” and “RECLO”, trying to solve the genuine problem from the source of goods.

Hand in hand in Japan’s two medieval stores, koala is the key to breaking the situation?

From the essence of second-hand luxury trade, consumers are willing to spend money to buy second-hand luxury “genuine goods”. Therefore, in the industry frequent shoddy, difficult to distinguish true from false and lack of after-sales problems, it is urgent to solve the problem of source, to trace back from the source to protect the rights and interests of consumers.

On July 7, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the notice of the “14th Five-year” circular economy development plan, which proposed to encourage the development of the “Internet + second-hand” model, encourage platform enterprises to introduce third-party second-hand goods professional business merchants, improve the efficiency of second-hand goods trading.

As a matter of fact, consumers have a high degree of trust in professional merchants. In recent years, there has been a “craze of medieval shops” in China. Major Medieval shops in Japan have become a new destination for Chinese tourists, and people are willing to go to such medieval shops as “Big Black House” and “RECLO” to buy second-hand luxuries.

There are two reasons:

First, and “middle ages” the origin of the word, originated in Japan, meaning “a sense of the old goods”; The second-hand luxury industry also comes from Japanese imports. As a result, Japanese mediaeval stores enjoy a high reputation in China.

Second, Japan’s mediaeval stores have higher detection capacity to ensure authenticity. In addition, sufficient supply and low price are the reasons to attract consumers.

For example, Japan’s largest medieval luxury store “Daiheya” was founded in 1947 with profound experience. Its products almost cover all luxury brands in the market, including watches, bags, jewelry, clothing and some rare brand goods, which greatly meet the needs of medieval lovers who are “out of print and hard to find”.

And after the establishment of cooperation with Kaola overseas shopping, it provides more than 1000 medieval bags of 16 brands for the latter. In terms of supply, koala is the short board of overseas purchase.

In addition, the big black house is favored by medieval lovers because it is superior to its peers in the formal source assurance, identification and pricing of second-hand luxury goods and resale within 30 days.

It is said that the big black house in the genuine identification of the use of “professional” experience to carry out artificial identification.

“Appraisers need about four years of professional training, including learning authenticity, communication skills with customers, legal knowledge and pricing skills,” Kohei Ogawa, chairman of Dakuroya, told The Beijing News. “Those with good results can work in our headquarters and large stores. “But training only enables them to acquire 80 percent of their professional skills, and the remaining 20 percent needs to be accumulated in the workplace.”

Long-term training and experience in the workplace make dahei House appraisers more confident and trusted by consumers. With the continuous accumulation of authenticity information, Dahewu has actually created a database of second-hand luxury goods, providing consumers with fast and accurate trade endorsement.

Therefore, the cooperation between Kaola Overseas Shopping and Dahei House is not only to supplement its own supply, but also to protect consumers’ rights and interests from the source of second-hand identification. After all, the market and legal norms of second-hand luxury in Japan, which have been formed for decades, can indeed make consumers feel more assured compared with the domestic market of second-hand luxury, which is still lacking in certainty.

On the other hand, Kaola overseas shopping introduced two Japanese merchants to enter, virtually also to improve the credibility of the platform.

Meng Gu, General Manager of Kaola.com, once said in public, “When consumers are willing to buy Vintage and second-hand goods on the same platform, it represents a large-scale promotion of their trust in you. We are willing and need to take the time to build that trust.”

In general, “break the situation, when independent”, Kaola overseas shopping took the lead in cooperating with Japanese medieval stores, from the source of goods to establish genuine standards, I believe that it can have greater space for development and bring new blood to the industry. As market observers put it, “The cooperation between Kaola And Dahewu can be a reference and model for China’s second-hand luxury industry itself.”

Article | pine cones of finance and economics