eBay has announced a game-changing move in the fashion resale market by scrapping fees for selling pre-owned clothing. Starting Monday, individuals can list all second-hand clothing items for free, including unworn garments with tags still attached.
However, seller fees will remain for categories such as trainers, watches, handbags, and jewellery.
Even existing individual fashion listings will reap the benefits of this new policy, with no selling fees applied from April 8 onwards.
A recent survey commissioned by eBay highlighted that a staggering 70 percent of Brits utilise less than half of their wardrobe regularly, and a whopping 92 percent have clothes they haven’t worn in the past year. Despite this, only a quarter of people sell their unwanted garments, with the average person hoarding over £400 worth of unused clothing.
In a bid to streamline the selling process, eBay is rolling out AI-generated item descriptions across the UK, designed to create “attention-grabbing” listings more efficiently.
Additionally, eBay Live, an innovative livestream shopping platform, is set to be trialled with select UK sellers soon. This feature, which has seen success in the US since its 2022 launch, offers live auctions and exclusive shopping deals, enabling purchases in real-time.
eBay’s initiative aims to bolster the circular economy in fashion by encouraging more consumers to engage in buying and selling pre-loved clothing.
eBay has boasted a significant environmental impact, claiming it prevented over 1.6 million kg of waste from ending up in landfills last year through its second-hand clothing sales.
Kirsty Keoghan, eBay’s general manager of global fashion, commented: “Free fashion selling has come at the right time for a nation sitting on billions of pounds worth of unwanted clothes.”
She added, “We know selling clothes can sometimes feel like a chore, so free selling and new updates like new AI-powered listings will help more of us to sell clothes easily, putting more cash in pockets.”
Keoghan further emphasised the sustainable benefits: “By encouraging more people to buy and sell pre-loved clothing, we’ll keep more clothes out of landfill as we collectively enable a circular economy for fashion.”
The data was gathered by Opinium, which surveyed 2,000 UK adults in March.
