As Bloomingdale’s forges a strategic partnership with leading luxury resale platform, Rebag, marking the chain’s first significant step into the secondhand market, Trove and Fashionphile expand the sector.
Through its new Rebag collaboration, Bloomingdale’s says it will democratize access to high-end brands while advancing sustainability and circularity. The launch includes more than 2,500 carefully selected designer handbags, watches, and fine jewelry pieces, which will be available through Bloomingdales.com, with more than 500 items featured in five key Bloomingdale’s locations across the United States.
Rebag’s concessions will be custom-designed to reflect its store aesthetics and will be prominently placed on the accessories floors of select Bloomingdale’s stores, including The Mall at Short Hills, White Plains in New York; Town Center at Boca Raton; Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks; and Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego. These concessions will offer a curated selection of pre-owned luxury goods, and Bloomingdale’s customers will have the opportunity to sell their items directly, utilizing Rebag’s proprietary AI tool, CLAIR. This tool, which assesses millions of data points, allows for quick valuation and payouts, streamlining the resale process.
“We are thrilled to join forces with Bloomingdale’s, a name synonymous with luxury and quality,” Charles Gorra, CEO and Founder of Rebag, said in a statement. “This partnership epitomizes our vision of the complementary relationship between first-hand and second-hand luxury. By bringing Rebag’s expertise in sourcing and vetting luxury goods to Bloomingdale’s discerning clientele, we are setting a new standard in the luxury retail experience.”
Jennifer Jones, Senior Vice President and General Merchandise Manager of Women’s Accessories at Bloomingdale’s, said the strategic partnership brings a new set of ultra-luxury brands to Bloomingdale’s, “while providing access to the finest pre-owned luxury items, enabling a full circular experience.”
The partnership is designed to bridge the gap between new and pre-owned luxury markets, offering Bloomingdale’s customers an enriched shopping experience. The items available through Rebag at Bloomingdale’s will focus on ultra high-end pieces, ensuring access to some of the most coveted brands. Additionally, Rebag will work closely with Bloomingdale’s store management and staff to integrate its luxury resale service into the existing customer journey, providing a seamless experience.
Trove nabs Recurate to ‘turbocharge’ resale
The Rebag x Bloomingdale’s launch comes as Trove, a leading force in the branded resale market, has expanded its reach with the acquisition of custom resale platform Recurate. This strategic move positions Trove to significantly enhance its offerings and solidify its standing as a dominant player in the resale technology space.
The acquisition integrates Recurate’s systems, business operations, and leadership into Trove’s existing framework. Wilson Griffin, cofounder and CEO of Recurate, and Adam Siegel, cofounder, chief product officer, and chief operating officer, will assume new roles within Trove as vice president of sales and vice president of product, respectively. “I think there’s a need to kind of turbocharge resale for brands, and the combination makes a lot of sense,” Terry Boyle, CEO of Trove, told WWD.
Recurate, known for providing a resale operating system that empowers brands to manage their secondhand market through custom marketplaces, offers solutions that complement Trove’s existing capabilities. “It is a complementary product that fills some product niches that Trove didn’t have itself,” said Boyle. “It gives us a peer-to-peer solution. It gives us a Shopify solution that we like a lot. So it basically allows us to create a one-stop shop for brands’ resale needs, and they can kind of create the program that they want to create.”
Trove anticipates substantial growth in traffic, particularly within the fashion, home, and accessories sectors. The company will also add 29 new brand partners to its portfolio, including well-known names like Steve Madden, Frank & Eileen, Frye, Coyuchi, Clare V, and Michael Kors. Trove’s expanded suite of solutions, including peer-to-peer trade-ins and Shopify integration, now accounts for over 75 percent of branded resale traffic in the U.S.
Fashionphile adds permanent locations
The timing of this merger is particularly relevant as brands increasingly turn to resale programs to bolster their sustainability efforts. Last month, luxury resale platform Fashionphile, known for its online presence and shop-in-shops at Neiman Marcus, solidified its physical retail presence by converting two successful mall pop-ups into permanent stores.
The new locations, situated in Carlsbad Premium Outlets and Irvine Spectrum Center, saw a significant influx of customers, with as many as 10,000 visitors monthly, prompting the decision to establish a long-term presence. Sarah Davis, Fashionphile’s founder, noted that more than three-quarters of these visitors were new to the brand, which spurred the company’s interest in exploring additional store openings in other markets.
To effectively manage its diverse and unique inventory in physical spaces, Fashionphile is leveraging 25 years of customer data and crowdsourcing to tailor its merchandise to local preferences. The company’s data-driven approach has allowed it to stock stores with items that match the buying patterns and requests of customers in specific regions, ensuring that 70 percent of the merchandise is carefully curated to meet local demand. “We have a little more flexibility in [the other] 30%,” Davis told Modern Retail. “It’s a system that we’ve developed in-house, and we’ve been testing it, and it actually works.”
Related on Ethos:
