Zara Pre-Owned to expand in Europe

Fashion retailer Zara is planning to expand its pre-owned clothing marketplace Zara Pre-Owned across European markets in the second half of this year. One of the selected markets is the Netherlands. The platform is currently available in the United Kingdom.

Fashion retailer Zara launched its secondhand clothing marketplace called Zara Pre-Owned in the United Kingdom in October last year. Other retailers, such as Zalando, have also launched pre-owned marketplaces. Customers can sell their used clothing on the online platform, after providing product pictures and information themselves. Additionally, they can request reparations of their clothing items or donate the clothes to the Red Cross.

European expansion

Now, the retailer has announced that the marketplace will be launching in other countries. It is unclear in how many markets it will launch exactly, but the Netherlands is one of them. With the platform, the retailer wants to offer customers a simple resale opportunity to extend the lifetime of their products.

Only 8.6% of raw materials are returned to the economy to be reused.

According to research, only 8.6 percent of raw materials are currently returned to the economy to be reused. A transition to more sustainable models could generate 4.5 trillion euros of additional economic output by 2030, said the World Economic Forum. Zara wants to support this with its pre-owned marketplace.

Partnership with Stripe

In order to streamline the expansion, Zara is partnering with the financial infrastructure platform Stripe. All payments on the marketplace will be processed by the Irish payments platform. “Sustainability in retail is finally receiving the attention it deserves to help protect our fragile planet. We’re thrilled that Zara has chosen Stripe as they lead the way,” said Eileen O’Mara, head of global sales at Stripe.

Update december 7th 2023: In September, the platform was launched in France. On December 12th, Zara Pre-Owned will launch in fourteen new European markets. These include: Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal.