Micolet sells second-hand fashion across Europe

Micolet is a new online marketplace that sells second-hand clothing for women. What’s interesting about Micolet, is that it enables customers from Europe to shop second-hand clothing from other countries.

The fashion company started in Spain, but has now expanded into five more countries across Europe. Currently, Micolet is present in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

Over three years ago, Micolet was born from the passion for fashion and for saving the environment. It was created with the idea of being able to extend the life of clothing by buying and selling second-hand women’s clothing.

Other platforms forces users to waste time

The partner of one of the company’s founders wanted to sell clothing that was no longer being used, but she couldn’t find any platforms that would allow her to do this without having to do all or at least part of the process. “These platforms forced consumers to waste time taking pictures, cataloging their clothes, setting prices, taking care of the shipment”, founder Aritza Loroño tells us.

‘In Spain, a courier picks up the clothes’

And that’s how Micolet started: the founders saw the need to offer a website on which users could buy and sell without having to worry about anything and, in addition, providing a guarantee. “Unfortunately, we can’t offer the service to sell in the UK at this moment, but in Spain we send a courier to pick up the clothes people want to sell so we really do manage everything! We also feel that this allows us to have a good relationship with our customers which is very important to us”, Loroño explains.

Competitors of Micolet in Europe

In the home market of Spain, Micolet has several competitors, like Percentil. One of the key differences between the two players however is that Percentil doesn’t accept ‘low cost’ brands. “But these items are extremely sought after by our customers and they attract people to our website, as we can offer them cheap clothing.”

In Spain, there’s also the online platform of Chicfy where consumers can sell their second-hand clothes. But on this website, users have to take charge of the whole process themselves: they have to upload the images of the clothes they want to sell, they have to write the descriptions of each item and they have to arrange the shipping once an item has been sold.

And in France, there’s Patatam, which offers a similar service and is also available in Spain. The company is working on opening their website up in the United Kingdom, but at the moment they are only available in two European markets.

The market of second-hand fashion is booming, but it’s also an industry where one should really think about how to make good money and sustain a profitable business. ” All of our clothing is sold at a discounted price which often means it’s at an extremely low cost. But this also means customers are willing to pay a little more for shipping”, Loroño tells us. “And second-hand fashion is definitely starting to become much more demanded around the world. People are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious and buying second-hand is far better for the planet and has such a huge, positive impact.”

Micolet’s customer base in Europe

At the moment, Micolet has about 800,000 users with most of them (40 percent) coming from Spain. France, Portugal and the UK are other popular markets with each of them representing 15 percent of the customer base. The remaining 10 percent and 5 percent come from Italy and Germany respectively. The company will open its online business in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic next year.

“When we are thinking about going cross-border, we think about whether the country is within the European Union, because this makes selling much easier. We also think about the population of the country as well as the culture regarding second-hand clothing within the country.”