Marks & Spencer is opening a secondhand clothing store on eBay to find new homes for “old favourites” as the household name taps into booming demand for preloved clothing.
The retailer has collected 36.5m secondhand clothes since it launched its “shwopping” clothing recycling scheme – now called Another Life – over a decade ago. Most of that clothing has been resold by charity partner Oxfam.
As growth in donations has slowed, M&S is trying something new and will reward customers for Oxfam donations containing at least one M&S item with a £5 voucher when they spend £35 in its stores or online.
To use the service customers must complete a short form on its website or scan a QR code in stores, then send their preloved items using a free local courier service to Reskinned, a repair and resale specialist.
eBay x Marks & Spencer launch campaign. Photograph: Marks & Spencer/eBay
The best M&S items that can be worn again will be professionally cleaned, repaired by Reskinned then listed on the M&S eBay store. Items that cannot be resold will be responsibly repurposed or recycled.
Oxfam will take a 15% share of M&S’s profits from the eBay sales and the rest will be split between the retailer, eBay and Reskinned. The charity will also continue to sell donated clothes, including non-M&S branded items that are not selected for the eBay store directly in its outlets.
Katharine Beacham, the head of sustainability in fashion for M&S, said it had led the way with “shwopping”, which had “shifted the way people looked at clothes”. “We wanted to revamp shwopping to continue to improve how customers look at clothing and how they can give clothes another life.”
The partnership with eBay gave M&S an opportunity to learn what customers were looking for from resale, she said. The company would consider how successful the eBay store was before potentially selling secondhand items via its own stores or website.
The change in setup comes amid rapid growth in the sale of secondhand clothes online, with M&S one of the most searched for brands on eBay.
Depop, the London-based secondhand clothing marketplace, is on track for $1bn (£740m) of annual sales for the first time, its owner, Etsy, said recently, after a 35% surge in sales to $250m in the three months to 30 June. The company said growth was driven by a 54% jump in sales in the US as it signed up a record number of new shoppers.
Its rival Vinted reported a 41% rise in sales to almost €813m (£704m) for 2024 with profits almost tripling to €95.4m after the company stepped out of the red for the first time in 2023.
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Major high street retailers from Primark to H&M are making space for secondhand items either on the shopfloor or online. Many retailers, including Uniqlo, Zara and M&S, have also begun offering repair services.
M&S has also tested offering shoppers the chance to send in unwearable clothes from any label in a prepaid postal donation bag left with a courier in partnership with Oxfam. Beacham said M&S was considering how to expand that trial.
Mary Creagh, the circular economy minister, said the government was focused on “ending our throwaway culture and ensuring that the 700,000 odd tonnes of clothes we throw away each year are worn more”.
“Only government and businesses working together can stop fashion costing the earth,” said Creagh who described the M&S initiative as a “great way for consumers to be rewarded for providing a new home for old favourites”.
