I noticed that I didn’t receive any updates after the glasses arrived to authentication. I ordered Gucci sunglasses almost two months ago for summer. This is so bad! This company is stealing and cheating customers out of money by changing the currencies behind their back. I asked to cancel the order, they answered they could not do anything but try to reach out to the seller. They just denied the issue, did not take any responsibility, and just ignored my refund request. Since I have a US bank account, I used my US card and billing address but immediately reached out to the support to get a refund of the price difference. I did not immediately notice that from euros to dollars, there was a difference of more than $60. But this is not the most surprising part! The climax of my customer experience happened when the price (that I was supposed to pay in euros) magically switched in dollars on the invoice. Moreover, there was no option available for installment payments as advertised on their website so the only option was payment upfront with card or Alipay. I made an offer to a seller, which was accepted in EUROS! Once at the checkout page, PayPal was offered as a method of payment but this option was disabled and I could not click on it. Price was displayed in Euros since it's the currency on my account. More of them are realising that goods can have second lives and are saving the original packaging and receipts to get higher resale prices.Terrible first (and last) experience on this website. Sellers have also gotten wise to the value of keeping proofs of purchase. Anyone who submits a counterfeit product for sale are first warned and then banned from the platform. Since then, two inspectors from Hong Kong have joined the team to check items from all over Asia for quality and authenticity before sending them to buyers. Vestiaire, which relocated its chief Asia authenticator from Paris, says it identifies a higher percentage of fakes in the region than in Europe and the US.
China, Hong Kong and Singapore account for two-thirds of global counterfeit exports, according to the most recent figures from the OECD. Product authenticity is the other big challenge for Vestiaire. You clean up your closet space while you can shop more.” “Now there’s an explosion of positive messages on social media about the benefits of secondhand products including affordability and eco-friendliness. You feel social stigma, you feel it’s like going to a pawn shop,” said Ree. “Asia has a traditional bias against secondhand. Singaporean actress Fiona Xie, who played socialite Kitty Pong in the Crazy Rich Asians movie, worked with Vestiaire to sell 10 luxury items from her personal closet for charity, becoming one of a growing number of local celebrities making pre-owned goods seem more like collectibles rather than discarded items. The view that selling or buying secondhand items was a sign of money problems is also fading, she said. Then they realised how come I have so many things I never wear, and a lot of the price tags are still on,” said Charlene Ree, whose company EternityX helps brands from LVMH to L’Oréal reach consumers in the region. “People spend so much time at home and they went through their closets.
Chinese tourists unable to travel abroad have turned to secondhand shopping apps and the duty-free malls on Hainan Island. Local upstarts like Beijing-based Plum and Ponhu Luxury have reaped the windfall, securing rounds of funding and an explosion of consumers. In Asia, Moizant can thank a shift in the way shoppers think about secondhand goods. raised $168 million in an IPO last month and even Nike Inc. has headed to Australia after raising $277 million in its initial public offering early this year. Kering SA, the owner of Gucci, Bottega Veneta and other luxury houses, recently acquired a 5 percent stake in Vestiaire, boosting its valuation to more than $1 billion.Īcross the world, online resale platforms are reaping new funding and expanding. Vestiaire declined to share details of their financials such as revenue and profit citing their status as a private firm. The region is set to make up more of Vestiaire’s business over the next year, from less than 10 percent currently. Consumers have spent years building collections of garments and handbags prime for resale. “The amount of products stuck in the Asian wardrobes is tremendous,” she said. That’s a prospect that fills Moizant with glee. Asia’s just at the beginning, thanks to local celebrities making pre-owned items seem trendy and shoppers realising that it pays to clean out their closets.