Where does Reskinned get our stock from?

Where does Reskinned stock come from?

The pieces you can find on the Reskinned website and our eBay partner stores are all carefully curated for you by our team. We hand pick everything to make sure you’re getting the best shopping experience possible, because we want shopping pre-loved to feel just as good as shopping brand new.

The stock that we get through the door comes either directly from our brand partners, or from you guys, through our takeback programme, where you can send over your old clothes, shoes and accessories, and we’ll give you a discount code to spend with one of your favourite brands to replace them.

When we get stock sent straight from our brand partners, there are a few different reasons why they are sending it to us, so we wanted to break it down for you to make it as easy as possible to understand.

So What Types of Stock Do We Handle?

From takebacks to customer returns, there are many different ways a product will end up in our hands. These are the most important ones:

Takebacks

The Definition: When you’ve finished wearing something, you send it to us, and we take it back in any condition, and find the best next step for it.

The type of stock you’ve probably heard most about from us is our “takeback” stock, and that’s because it’s the best way for you to get involved.

Our unique takeback scheme is the best way you can get involved in contributing to our stock, and making sure anything you’ve bought in the past is rehomed or responsibly recycled. We’ll give you a voucher for your favourite shop in return, so you can make a new purchase if you want to, and replace the thing you’ve given away.

Participating in a takeback programme like ours is a great way to make sure your clothes aren’t ending up in landfill, which is unfortunately something that happens a lot when you get rid of your old clothes in other ways.

Most brands don’t have the infrastructure to create their own takeback programmes successfully, and would have to rely on multiple other companies to work out what to do with the clothes they get back. That’s when they run into issues where clothes are disposed of in the wrong ways, because they’ve lost all visibility too early on in the process.

When a brand partners with us, our 20 years of recycling specialism kick in, and we handle all of the tricky stuff, so they don’t have to try and work that out.

That way, it’s easy for everyone.

Samples

The Definition: Samples are prototypes created to showcase upcoming designs, or test the manufacturing process and make sure a design works.

Brands of all shapes and sizes make samples, because they need to know that their designs are going to work before their factories make hundreds - or even thousands - of them.

The problem is that samples are often one of a kind, sometimes not quite right, or can be chopped up and drawn on by designers as they figure out their final designs.

Most brands don’t have the capacity to sell each unique sample, especially when a lot of them have minor flaws, or aren’t the correct sizing or labelling for a brand to be legally able to sell on their own website or in store. That means - you guessed it - that oftentimes these end up in landfill, or shipped overseas.

The fabrics used are brand new, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating a sample, so it’s a huge shame for these to be thrown away - especially when most of them are in perfect condition.

Our brand partners send us any samples they don’t need any more. Our team then assesses each individual item and works out if it’s in good enough condition to rehome, or if it needs to be recycled.

That way even when something isn’t wearable, it’ll still get repurposed or reused in some way.

Deadstock and End of Line Stock

The Definition: Deadstock and end-of-line stock is stock that isn’t sellable for a business.

There are a lot of different reasons why something could become deadstock and end-of-line stock - it might be that a company ordered too many of something, and there isn’t the demand. It could also be because of weather or seasonal changes, like when it starts being warmer earlier on in the year, and a brand is still left with coats and jumpers that nobody has a need for.

Sometimes a brand will update their designs, and they will no longer want to sell an old logo or design, so these will become deadstock or end-of-line stock too.

Some brands are able to sell their end-of-line stock slowly, or at another point in the year, but inevitably most companies end up with the problem of not enough storage, and too many products.

This has left a lot of brands and companies with a big issue - what to do with all this stuff that they can’t sell? Unfortunately, it’s led to a lot of cases where end-of-line stock has ended up in landfill or incinerated.

We take away that worry for our brand partners, by taking on their end-of-line stock, and making sure it goes to a good home. You can get great quality brand-new clothes for a discounted price, and nothing gets wasted. Everyone is happy.

Faulty Items

The Definition: Faulty items refer to any products that have defects, and don’t meet a brand’s quality standards.

Sometimes just a few items from a manufacturer are faulty, or sometimes it’s an entire batch. We’ve seen t-shirts with upside-down prints and things sewn back to front - there are a lot of ways that clothes can end up not meeting a brand’s quality standards. Especially when manufacturing is happening halfway across the world, and in another language - mistakes are often made.

We take faulty items that brands don’t know what to do with, saving them from landfill, and working out what to do next. Sometimes the garments are perfectly good except for minor issues, but other times they’re not wearable. We make the decision on a case by case basis whether to try to rehome something, or to recycle it so that it can start a new life as something else.

Photoshoot Products

The Definition: Clothes and accessories that a brand has used for a photoshoot, which has sometimes only been worn for a couple of hours.

Products that are used for photoshoots can seem like they’re pretty much brand new - sometimes they’re only even worn for a few minutes or even less. The problem is that they can’t be sold by brands after that, so we take them off their hands, ozone cleanse them and make sure they feel clean and new again.

These are some of the best value items you can buy from us - they’re usually brand new designs, but still at our signature discount prices.

Customer Returns

The Definition: The things we buy, try on at home, decide we don’t need and send back to the place we bought them from.

Did you know that a lot of the time those things aren’t able to be put back on the shelf? Sometimes it’s because they’ve been lightly worn, other times a company has already stopped selling that specific product. This happens frequently with big companies and brands who change their stock every few weeks.

Without quality control, it can be easier for brands to just discard everything than to go through hundreds or even thousands of returns, checking the condition. We hand sort customer returns, making sure that anything that can be rehomed is, and anything that needs to be thrown away is responsibly recycled. If something is in need of a little bit of sprucing up, we’ve got a repair team on hand, who will make any necessary repairs to make sure everything that can be rehomed, is.

Where can you find pre-loved pieces and deadstock from your favourite brands (at discounted prices)?

What a good question! There are two ways to shop your favourite brands with Reskinned: The Reskinned website, and the Reskinned x eBay brand stores.

The Reskinned Website

Your first destination for shopping pre-loved is the Reskinned website, where we stock clothes, shoes and accessories from brands like TALA, Finisterre, Sweaty Betty and so many more.

The clothes you can find on the Reskinned website will either be sent to us through our takeback programme, or we’ve received them directly from the brands themselves, because they’re deadstock, a customer return, or the brand isn’t going to sell that item on their website for another of the reasons above.

The Reskinned website features unique monthly drops, with a curated selection that’s hand picked by our fashion merchandisers.

We want buying pre-loved to feel like shopping for something brand new, and making sure the website is home to only the best pieces we think you’re going to love. Most of the pieces are one-of-one, meaning it’s even more important to get in there quick and get your hands on a rare find.

Whatever the case, these clothes are refreshed and ozone cleansed, and are ready to find a new home at a fraction of the retail price.

The Reskinned x eBay Brand Stores

For some of our partners, we have eBay stores where you can find pieces at a fraction of the normal retail price. Each brand has a unique store, so you can shop effortlessly, just seeing the items from the brand you love. Brands like Seasalt Cornwall, Oliver Bonas and Nobody’s Child have all sent us great pieces for you to nab for amazing prices (just to name a few brands you can find on there).

Our eBay stores are the home for deadstock, so we usually have multiple size options for many of our pieces. You’ll sometimes find one-off pieces too, but these tend to be customer returns so they’ll be basically brand new!

Whichever platform you choose to shop on, you’ll find the same circular fashion at the same amazing prices, but if you want a curated shop, the Reskinned website is the place to be, and if you’re happy to hunt for a bargain, head to eBay.

And whether you’re shopping on the Reskinned website or our eBay brand partner store, you’ll have the same signature Reskinned experience. That means everything is hand sorted in our London warehouse, cleansed through our ozone water free cleaning process, measured and photographed by our team of professionals to show every bit of them clearly. And it all comes with a 30 day return policy, just in case you change your mind.

What happens if Reskinned can’t sell the stock we get sent?

With our 20 years of recycling expertise, we aren’t going to let a good thing go to waste, and that means all textiles, not just the ones that get rehomed.

We prioritise quality first and foremost, when choosing which clothes that we resell on our platform. We want to make sure that buying pre-loved feels as good as buying new, but at a better price.

That’s why our drops are carefully curated, so the shopping experience is fun for you, and you know you’ll always find something you’re going to love.

Many of the clothes that we might not sell on our website are still perfectly usable, so we find new homes for those ones too. And that leaves us with any recycling, which we make sure is done in the most sustainable way possible, so nothing ever goes to waste.

Even though we do find new homes for most of the pieces that come our way, there is the occasional item that isn’t able to be resold. If it’s something that can be reused in a different way - eg. as an upcycle project for one of our fashion designer partners, or university students, then that’s where it will go first. But if it’s truly reached the end of the road, we will make sure it’s responsibly recycled through one of our trusted recycle routes.

You can read all about the recycling process at Reskinned and exactly how it works in this blog, and if you’ve still got questions, feel free to reach out to us!