A new startup is taking on fashion’s pervasive waste problem while enticing consumers with too-good-to-be-true deals.
Delaware-based ItsLikeFashion.com announced Tuesday the launch of its membership-based retail portal, which will feature a rotating selection of household brands and luxury items from labels like Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, DKNY, Chloe, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Versace, Givenchy, Burberry and more.
Categories will range from apparel and footwear to accessories and home wares, all discounted up to 90 percent off retail prices. Brands and products will be featured on a rotating basis, the company said in a statement.
Combining physical retail with online commerce, the limited-inventory sales will take place both at popups across the country and on the company’s website. Members will receive notifications a few days prior to each event, indicating the timing and location of the popup, and inviting members to preview the sales.
The company anticipates that each sales event will run between three to four days, depending on inventory levels. Members will be able to purchase both in person and on the ItsLikeFashion.com site.
Concerns about retail’s waste problem have rocked the fashion industry, and consumers are taking note. Retailers in the U.S. alone send billions of pounds of unsold apparel to landfills annually.
Additionally, returns create more than five billion pounds of waste each year, totaling 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, ItsLikeFashion.com said. According to data management and analytics firm 1010Data, online returns happen twice as frequently as in-store returns, and the associated losses are multifaceted. And ItsLikeFashion.com claims e-commerce returns are more than double those for brick-and-mortar, at 25 percent versus 9 percent.
In addition to the cost and carbon footprint of shipping items back to a retailer, there’s also the possibility that returned items may need to be sold at a discount—or trashed completely due to damage.
“ItsLikeFashion.com has joined the fight to reduce the amount of excess inventory headed to landfills or incineration by providing manufacturers a more sustainable, ‘greener’ alternative to liquidate their inventories,” the company said.