REPORT
Resale vs. Retail:
The power of brands
By Rebag Oct. 28, 2019
Hunting for the handbag of your dreams is no longer
only emotionally-loaded; it can be tactical as well. With the launch of Clair, the luxury appraisal platform designed to instantly reveal the resale value of 10,000+ bags, Rebag is bringing stock market-like data to the forefront of luxury handbag resale.
It’s an exciting and empowering prospect. Anytime you go shopping and your dream bag catches your eye, you can access Clair on your phone, and search for the price that Rebag is currently willing to pay to acquire that bag. Clair allows you to study its investment value before you proceed with swiping your credit card, making it easy to shop smartly and not just emotionally.
But, what about the brands themselves? Rebag has pulled together all of its Clair data to look at brands as a whole, and calculated each brand’s average percentage of value retained in comparison to their retail price. Some data points, like Hermes and Chanel, are as expected; others are wildly surprising. The top-performing brands retain at least 60% of their retail price on average in the resale market and are categorized as the “safe bets,” or in Hermes’ case, the “unicorn,” which retains between 80-90% of its retail price on average. Meanwhile, lower-performing brands that retain less than 50% of their retail price on average are categorized as the “low-” and “high-risks.”
The Value Of Brands In Resale
Now, keep in mind that the above data is a generalization. It really comes down to each individual handbag model that each brand produces. Look at Louis Vuitton, for example. The brand is a safe bet, typically averaging a retainment of 60-70% of its retail price. But you have to look at the value of the individual styles that the brand produces to see how it got to this figure. Below, Rebag breaks down the average resale value of a range of LV models.
The Value Of Louis Vuitton Bags
So, what happens next now that the resale industry has this data? It’s up to the brands, the consumer, and the market to decide that for themselves. For the time being, customers can shop smartly with the power of Clair at their fingertips.
