For decades eBay has been at the front foot for its global market online, millions of clothes and shoes have been sold on eBay both first and second hand. Did you know 16% of all products sold on eBay are clothes and accessories? Check out other interesting facts here at Oberlo. Second hand selling (taking away the factors of travel pollution) does help contribute to sustainable fashion as instead of throwing or cluttering unused clothes you can easily sell it on eBay for some extra cash or as a business even however with ethical issues regarding the sellers it does dampen the trust with the site for some users. In 2021 have eBay finally come up with a solution to solve a sneaker heads worst nightmare of buying fake sneakers? How does this help sustainable fashion?
Controversy with online selling on eBay
The popular eBay market can be accessed by anyone with an account, some people take advantage of its accessibility and use it to sell fake branded clothing or sneakers as the real one, because of this many users have become sceptical of using the site to shop for sneakers. For example Jordans have gained a huge popularity over the years with many retro colour ways selling out in minutes of release. With high demand and low supply this has caused high reselling prices for the limited release sneaker but millions of sneakers over the years have been replicas of the real Jordans that sell for high prices. Quite often instead of people buying what they think are Jordans made by Nike are actually made in other factory’s to replicate the look. Sceptical users did not want to shop on eBay for sneakers as there was nobody checking the packages for fakes or real and did not want to end up receiving fake sneakers. Despite having customer services it still did create a negative reputation for sneaker selling on eBay. Check out some of the most expensive purchases at Complex:https://youtu.be/SIipjHS-qxE .
What have eBay done?
Now eBay has introduced a service where high reselling shoes are now checked and verified by eBay employees themselves. This is a huge step forward as for years users could sell fake sneakers without anybody checking and close their accounts. Having a trusted team of verifiers now helps put the trust and reliability into the site for the users, they can now buy second hand sneakers with confidence and avoid risk of losing money on a big purchase. To read further about authentication on eBay click here:
Why does this help sustainable fashion?
One way this helps sustainable fashion is it will encourage more users to buy second hand sneakers. Apps like Goat and Stock x have showcased the way sneakers can be verified and sold online, becoming very popular in America. eBay has been established since 1995 and are a worldwide company, with the kind of scale they boast and now a trustee team of employees verifying sneakers it can now be bought and sold with assurance again. With the pandemic taking its effect for some it’s important to cut costs and second hand sneakers can definitely help sneaker lovers still enjoy their favourite shoes for a lower price than the new one. In the past I was introduced to the popular online market when I was looking for cheap phones and from there I was able to explore just how accessible selling and purchasing second hand goods is.
One category that was a favourite of mine was the sneaker section, as I started to get more into sneakers through videos on YouTube eBay helped me connect to sellers all over the UK since it wasn’t in stores for my area. Sneaker lovers like me are all over the UK, we would have to go the extra mile to ensure the sneakers are real. Eliminating this component does encourage me to shop more for sneakers on eBay as it will take less time to check for the real or fake ones. The shoes get shipped to eBay before they arrive to my home so it feels a lot more secure. Second hand shopping is great and should be encouraged.