Livestreams under the banner of "one-of-a-kind items" and "tail goods" are becoming a gray channel for the circulation of second-hand clothes. According to a report by China Newsweek, some consumers said that clothes they snapped up at low prices such as 6.9 yuan or 9.9 yuan in "one-of-a-kind" livestreams arrived with pilling, and private items were even found in pockets, leading them to suspect the clothes were actually second-hand.

The report reconstructed this chain: a used-clothing recycling station in Beijing's Fengtai District collects clothes from nearby residential compounds or through door-to-door pickup at 0.5 yuan per kilogram, sorts them by condition, and sells them wholesale at prices ranging from several hundred yuan per ton to nearly 20,000 yuan per ton. Some are exported, while others flow to second-hand clothing wholesale markets in Zhengzhou, Shanxi, Guangzhou, Wuhan and other places. Lao Wu, an operator of a used-clothing factory in Guangzhou, openly solicited orders on social platforms, saying he could supply "one-of-a-kind" livestreams. Used clothes collected through scattered channels are thus bought at low prices and then sold to various places through livestreams.

Lin Xi, an operator at the tail-goods wholesale market on South Third Ring Road in Zhengzhou, revealed that about 80% of the supply in the current tail-goods market is actually second-hand clothing. The industry-recognized defect rate for genuine tail goods is 5%–8%, mostly production-related issues such as missing buttons or belts, whereas defects in second-hand clothes are non-standardized and depend on their condition. The industry therefore believes that although second-hand clothes may be similar to "one-of-a-kind items" in quantity, their value is fundamentally different.

The chaos goes beyond disguised sourcing. Low-priced second-hand clothing on sale generally lacks basic information such as material composition, production standards and manufacturer, and there is no way to identify whether it has been washed and disinfected. Merchants refuse after-sales service on the grounds of "minor defects accepted by default" and "no returns or exchanges," while consumers face return shipping costs starting at 10 yuan paid out of pocket, making rights protection costly. Cui Lili, executive director of the E-commerce Research Institute at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, pointed out that in low-value rights-protection cases, some consumers simply give up monitoring and reporting.

Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Protection Law Research Society of the China Law Society, said that selling old clothes as new ones infringes consumers' right to know and may constitute fraud. Under the Consumer Rights Protection Law, fraudulent conduct should be compensated at three times the price, or 500 yuan if that amount is less than 500 yuan. He believes that second-hand clothing lacks standards in appraisal, cleaning and disinfection, and that the division of transaction responsibilities and law enforcement lack a basis, making systematic management urgently necessary.

There has already been action at the regulatory level. In March this year, the China Second-hand Goods Industry Association and the National Technical Committee for Standardization of Second-hand Goods launched the revision of two national standards: the General Rules for Quality Appraisal of Second-hand Goods and the Management Specifications for Second-hand Goods Markets. Cui Lili suggested that platforms should increase penalties, take warning, suspension or termination measures against violators, and establish a blacklist to restrict them from rejoining.

For the industry, used-clothing recycling inherently has both environmental and market value, but where it flows determines how far it can go. The combination of opaque sourcing, absent standards and poor after-sales practices is eroding consumer trust in second-hand clothing and squeezing the room for legitimate tail goods and full-price clothing. Whether the standardization process can keep up with the speed of circulation will determine whether this market moves toward a virtuous cycle or continues to produce the next batch of "garbage."

Source: What I threw away is being snapped up in livestreams! Why have second-hand clothes become "one-of-a-kind items" in livestreams? · Originally published on 2024-06-11