MINI BIZ IDEA: the pre-loved fashion white space, market-- & insurmountable challenges.

The state of the union (vintage, resale and pre-loved) today... 👗

If I could FIX one category of business, it would be the pre-loved and vintage clothing world.

My favorite vintage Dale Earnhardt NASCAR button up, Gucci specs via Rent the Runway, my mom’s Seiko from the 80’s. :)

Vintage and used clothing is infinitely more popular than it was a decade ago— look at The RealReal, ThredUp, Rent The Runway, ForDays, Nuuly, ByNext, By Rotation, Vestiaire Collective, Croissant, Gently, Trove, CaaStle, Grailed, Bill Gates’ daughter’s new start-up, many more— all real and successful businesses, B2C and B2B, built exclusively around the used or shared clothing value prop. This is an economy of its own now.

We’re finally living in an era where you can screenshot an outfit or an item that you see on an influencer or in a magazine and reverse image search it to find vintage or used options that are similar. Hallelujah. Lines for vintage stores here in NYC are down the block if a single TikTok video about them goes viral. (RIP to my local haunt, Stella Dallas, wh…