Traditionally the preserve of musty charity shops and crowded flea markets, the secondhand fashion market has changed beyond recognition in recent years. It’s currently growing three times faster than the clothing sector overall and is expected to be worth $218 billion worldwide by 2026, according to thredUp.
Naturally, foresighted brands are keen to tap into the societal shift towards sustainable and affordable shopping. High street brands such as Cos and luxury retailers like Selfridges have both started reselling preloved alongside new collections, while Love Island, a show once synonymous with fast-fashion giants like Pretty Little Thing, now boasts eBay as its headline sponsor.
Launched in 2011, Depop began life when re-commerce was still a fairly niche concept. At the time, founder Simon Beckerman was running Milan-based fashion and culture magazine Pig. “He effectively built this marketplace, initially as an extension of the magazine. Then it very quickly began to take on a life of its own as this interesting creative-led, curated, community-driven commerce platform,” Depop’s chief marketing officer, Peter Semple, tells CR.
“I’m not sure they would have necessarily had any of the language for that at the time,” he continues. “But it was when Instagram was starting up and people were finding spaces – evolved ways in the post-Myspace and Facebook world – of expressing themselves online. Simon saw that as an opportunity to share what they had going on, but also to use their personal expression and taste to sell stuff.”
Given that the boom in secondhand has, up until now, largely been driven by Gen Z, it’s not surprising that this age group has played a huge part in Depop’s growth over the past decade. At one point, 90% of the app’s user base were reportedly under the age of 26.
“That demographic, who are really digitally prolific, helped drive the brand and the existence of the brand without much investment in marketing. They’re constantly talking about the things they’re doing online; they’re showing up in different profiles, and they’re also motivated to share their Depop shop, because then that brings more exposure to the things they’re trying to sell,” Semple explains.
Hot on the heels of DesignStudio’s high-profile rebrands for Airbnb (2014) and Deliveroo (2016), which both came during pivotal stages of their development, Depop’s 2017 rebrand, with its bold type and bright colour palette, was a clear signal of intent from the business. “All of that was connected to this new generation that was gravitating towards Depop and helping form what it would become,” says Semple. “And it’s been interesting over the last few years seeing brands that I love and respect doing things that look very similar to the Depop branding thing. I think DesignStudio set the business on the right path, and then Depop itself has obviously had a cultural and creative impact.”
While the brand was already growing rapidly when Semple joined as CMO in 2019, no one could have predicted the impact of what was going to come next: the pandemic. As retail and supply chains were disrupted, and physical stores were forced to close, the world’s eyes were simultaneously opened to alternative methods of commerce. With newfound time on their hands, people flocked to platforms like Depop to clear out their wardrobes and make a bit of extra cash during a period of economic uncertainty.
“Since that return to normality post-pandemic, the amazing thing is that more and more people have come to resale – it’s no longer solely the domain of Gen Z and sustainability influenced people,” says Semple. “I think people want to feel good about the choices they’re making and the brands they align themselves with, but affordability is another reason why lots of people come to the secondhand market.
We need to make secondhand fashion accessible and more interesting than defaulting to buying the new thing
Since its $1.6 billion acquisition by Etsy in 2021, Depop has seen sustained growth around the world, particularly in its core markets of the UK (where its headquarters are based), the US and Australia. But the growing number of resale marketplaces vying for shoppers’ attention has also led the brand to focus more on marketing and design in order to set itself apart.
The brand has worked with a number of creative agencies over the past couple of years, including research studio On Road and Portland-based Öpinionated, but the majority of its output comes from its in-house studio. “I worked for Google Creative Lab before, and obviously Google is a different scale, but things change and evolve so quickly internally at tech companies that it’s difficult for even the best creative partners to keep up,” Semple says. “It’s a relatively small group of people here, so we then tap into an interesting group of specialists – designers and art directors and filmmakers – who are extended friends of the family.”
As a digital-first brand, it’s only natural that much of Depop’s marketing efforts engage directly with digital culture. In the past, it has teamed up with Apple Music to curate various playlists; partnered with HBO Max to curate outfits around the characters in its Gossip Girl reboot; and even tapped into the noughties revival with its Sims collab, which involved some of the app’s top sellers designing clothes to appear in the game’s high school nostalgia expansion pack.
Interestingly, though, the team behind the brand is equally keen to engage with its community in the real world. One of its latest campaigns, Depop This Look, saw it tap up a roster of tastemakers to curate edits of the platform’s vintage finds inspired by notable LA hotspots. In the UK, it has created a bright red concept store for its three-month residency in Selfridges and, most recently, hosted the festival-themed Night Market, where shoppers could hunt down vintage and handmade pieces while watching performances from homegrown musical talent including Headie One and Flo.
“Thrifting was a thing that existed in lots of stores. Then platforms like Depop made access to vintage and secondhand inventory much more ubiquitous, but there’s still a desire to touch and feel the garments and to actually interact with fashion in some real-life space,” says Semple. “How many people can physically get [to those events] is obviously pretty limited, but then we create digital content off the back of it and that allows us to really show up with the interesting musician and the branding of the space, so you get more of a holistic sense of the brand.”
With 30 million-plus items available on Depop at any given time, tapping into the conscious consumerism zeitgeist is the brand’s main priority in the coming years. To achieve this, Semple recognises that the brand needs to look beyond its Gen Z heartlands – and age demographics in general for that matter. “We’ve been consciously opening the aperture for different demographics in pursuit of simply being the most interesting and exciting place for resale,” he says.
“I’m 41. I’m far beyond that core Gen Z demographic, but I’m really interested in the new things they are looking at across the world, and I’m not alone in that. People look to what’s young and new and progressive, and those things can be inspirations. They don’t have to be limited to an immediate peer set. The last thing we want is to be exclusionary to someone when everyone should be able to find a version of what they’re looking for on Depop.”
It’s a bold stance to take at a time when much of the marketing world is obsessing over how it can capture Gen Z’s attention. But it seems necessary if the brand hopes to achieve its aim of bringing circular fashion to the masses. “If we’re trying to give people the opportunity to participate in a different way of consuming fashion from the way they’ve spent the last decades of their lives being conditioned to want new stuff, we need to make secondhand fashion accessible and more interesting than defaulting to buying the new thing,” says Semple.
“There are competitors that are much more mass than us. That has its power and there’s lots we can learn from that, but I think where we began, the community of interesting people, the types of inventories that surface on Depop, they’re all desirable draws that make people go, perhaps that will help me take the jump into circular consumption. That’s why I think you might come here [instead of] other places. But going to any of them is ultimately good for the world, so I’ll take that.”
