Fashion retailer to recycle clothes online

Greenwise Staff

5th May 2010

A leading online fashion retailer is to start allowing its customers to trade their unwanted clothes on its site.

Asos plc plans to launch an online marketplace where its customers will be able trade their own trousers, dresses and bags later this year. The environmentally friendly service will also be open to small businesses and independent labels to promote their own fashion products, and will provice larger companies another sales channel to market excess stock.

Asos said the new marketplace was part of a number of initiatives planned by the company to extend its offering to its growing customer base.

"With this initiative, we are able to offer both individual and corporate customers and additional channel to sell their fashion merchandise in an environment, and in front of a customer, that is all about fashion," said Nick Robertson, chief executive of Asos.

Established in June 2000, Asos has grown rapidly and is now the UK’s largest independent online fashion and beauty retailer. It attracts over 6.9 million unique visitors a month with 2.9 million registered users and 1.2 million active customers (defined as having shopped in the last six months).

Aimed primarily at the 16 to 34 year-old fashionistas, it offers over 35,000 branded and own label product lines across womenswear, menswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty with over 1,500 new product lines being introduced each week. Designer brands, including See By Chloé, Marc by Marc Jacobs and McQ by Alexander McQueen.