The Best Place To Buy A Designer Bag Second Hand (And Not Get Scammed)

The Best Place To Buy A Designer Bag Second Hand (And Not Get Scammed)

There are few great pleasures in life, but one of them—especially for fashion fanatics—has to be getting your hands on the designer handbag of your dreams. And what's even better than securing the goods is doing so without breaking the bank.

But the clincher is that iconic designer brands don't tend offer mark downs on their bags, meaning that it's rather rare to find brands like Louis Vuitton or Chanel in the clearance section.

Surely, there's a way around this fashion let-down, right? There is, and it's shopping for a second hand designer bag.

Of course, this is surely far from the first time that thrifting has been mentioned when it comes to saving a buck or two. But for preloved designer items, it's actually easier than you'd think to get your hands on a discounted couture handbag that is certified authentic. 

Naturally, the potential to be scammed when splurging on a second hand luxury bag is possible. So, two things are necessary pre-purchase: an abundance of research and a trustworthy authenticator

While, sure, the purchasing process might feel rather daunting, there is a way to shop smart. Below, we've rounded up the best ways to get your hands on your most beloved designer item, without compromising on price or legitimacy.

Azura Reborn 

The Australian-based luxury fashion company has partnered with re-sale experts, Luxclusif, from beloved luxury retailer FARFETCH, to launch Azura Reborn. 

With one of the easiest sales processes for those looking to sell their bags, sellers can have their designer bags shipped to Azura Reborn for free, authenticated and receive payment within a 72-hour window. 

For those shopping from the site, you can rest assured the bag you've been eyeing has been authenticated and been given the tick of approval from experts with years of knowledge and experience in the field.

Curious? Fret not, you can check out Azura Reborn here.  

 

Diandra Malivindi was the Digital Beauty Writer for ELLE and marie claire Australia.

Click Here for the Marie Claire Article https://www.marieclaire.com.au/second-hand-designer-bags-where-to-buy

January 27, 2023 — Sam Wood
This New Designer Re-Sale Site Is A Must-Know For Vintage Shoppers

This New Designer Re-Sale Site Is A Must-Know For Vintage Shoppers

Between calls for circular fashion and Y2K styles dominating the sartorial sphere, re-sale and vintage shopping is more popular than ever.

In fact, the re-sale sector is predicted to grow 11 times faster than retail in the next five years.

Hunting down that dress you missed out on or investing in statement pieces of a bygone era is one thing, but when it comes to purchasing a secondhand designer piece, the stakes can feel tenfold.

Fakes and scams are harder to spot than ever, so buying from authenticated luxury re-sellers is undoubtedly the safest alternative—particularly when you’re looking to spend upward of a few thousand dollars.

That’s why you’re going to want to familiarise yourself with the newest re-sale site on the vintage market block: Azura Reborn.

 

The Australian-based luxury fashion company has partnered with re-sale experts, Luxclusif, who are owned by well-know luxury fashion site, FARFETCH.

The platform is offering one of the easiest end-to-end processes for selling your items.

“Once a customer logs in to the resale platform and submits their item for resale, a paid DHL Express label is automatically generated and sent to their email address so they can send the bag in for free,” Bonnie Wood, Azura Fashion Group’s Marketing Manager tells marie claire Australia.

“Once it arrives with Azura, our in-house authentication experts that have over 7 years in the resale industry, authenticate the item and grade it on resale value within 48 hours. After this an acceptance or a deny email is sent to the customer, where they will then accept or deny the offer.

“If they accept, the funds will be in their account within 24 hours of accepting. Meaning a customer can liquidate their entire wardrobe within a week, and not have to worry about having to resell it on a marketplace or other retail site.”

Once the process is complete you can use the funds to shop from any sites across the Azura Fashion Group and FARFETCH network.

For those looking to buy, as Wood mentioned, you can expect expertly authenticated bags of great quality, which is that little boost of confidence we always need when shopping second-hand. Check out the site here and happy shopping!

Maddison Hockey
Maddison Hockey is the Shopping Editor (digital) at marie claire and ELLE. When she’s not online shopping, she’s furiously binge-watching the latest watercooler show, but more often than not, she’s doing both simultaneously.

 

Click here for the Marie Claire Link https://www.marieclaire.com.au/azura-reborn-resale

January 27, 2023 — Bonnie Wood

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December 28, 2022 — Shopify API
10 best retailers to buy discount designer clothes online

10 best retailers to buy discount designer clothes online

These days buying designer clothing can feel more out of reach than ever before thanks to the oh-so-fun combo of the rising cost of living and inflation.

While there's nothing wrong with shopping more affordable brands, it can be nice to invest in key designer pieces that will often be more classic in style as well as lasting longer, too.

It’s also not something you need to break the bank to do — over the years I’ve managed to add a handful of designer bags, accessories and clothing pieces to my wardrobe simply by shopping around.

Here’s my pick of the best places to buy designer clothing online as well as a break down the brands that offer the most value.

THE ICONIC

I couldn’t do a list of the best places to buy discounted designer clothing online and not include THE ICONIC. It has probably the best collection of Australian designers in one place, plus speedy delivery and free returns.

To make things even sweeter it also frequently runs promotions so it’s possible to score a discount if you’re happy to wait. My advice? Add what you’re after to your wishlist and check back in once a week to see if you’ve gotten lucky and it’s been discounted.

THE ICONIC also now features Azura Reborn which offers authenticated luxury handbags at great prices.

What to shop: THE ICONIC’s designer sale section, Azura Reborn’s collection of preloved Louis Vuitton and these on-sale Shona Joy dresses.

 

See full article here https://www.news.com.au/best-of/fashion/best-discount-designer-clothing-online-retailers/news-story/fa19700c47622f6d2f404db1192ca17d

December 07, 2022 — Sam Wood
Aussie fashion tech Azura weaves suppliers into global e-commerce fabric

Aussie fashion tech Azura weaves suppliers into global e-commerce fabric

With the help of machine learning and an eye for untapped opportunities, the founders of Azura Consulting have built a data creation and inventory management system connecting fashion stock with more than 100 online marketplaces worldwide.

Established in Sydney just 18 months ago by Sam Wood and Tim Bloore, the group is notching 34 per cent month-on-month revenue growth with $3 million turnover expected this financial year, with a small percentage of sales coming from their own e-commerce website Azura Runway.

The two-pronged business model began with luxury fashion and expanded into fast fashion when COVID-19 hit, but now the founders want to harness their technology to take more Australian fashion brands to the globe.

The moment for blue sky thinking happened when Wood and Bloore, who have decades of experience between them in e-commerce and advertising respectively, noticed friends who were wholesaling bulk lots of luxury fashion items ended up with too much supply slack.

"They would always be left with some remaining pieces, but the products didn't have very good descriptions or they didn't have proper images or the data that came with it," Wood tells Business News Australia.

"So they had no way of getting rid of the products that they couldn't sell through bulk."

Their first solution was Azura Runway whereby the pair would create manual descriptions for these excess items and sell them on their own online portal, but the real business growth driver was the decision to feed the products onto marketplaces around the world.

"For a store that relied heavily on wholesale trade or bricks and mortar, they were able to plug into us and then we would feed them across 42 marketplaces worldwide, and the whole business grew from there," 

The earliest iteration of Azura Consulting was an easily replicable business model, but just before COVID-19 hit the pair embarked on technology development that was to alter the course of their journey.

"We were always handwriting or doing the hard yards with the descriptions, but then we built this AI technology, which kicked into gear around April 2020 and gave us the capability to list 100,000 products across marketplaces worldwide," Wood says.

The platform's capacity as a zero inventory model has grown a lot since then.

"With access to industry-leading AI and machine learning, Azura's platform can curate 150,000 products from over 1,200 brands in a matter of moments and feed these items, using direct integrations, into these e-commerce marketplaces," he says.

"Azura's omnichannel approach to sales, with direct data integrations into premier fashion marketplaces across the globe minimises reliance on any one channel, reduces marketing expenditure and ensures a strong, reliable and proven revenue stream."

He emphasises marketplaces tend to require very specific data to list their items, which can be administratively arduous for users, whether they be a wholesaler or a small offline retailer.

"What our tool does is it will scan the image of the product you have, and it will tell you when that dress for example is short sleeve, whether it's got a crew-neck, whether it's knee length, what colour it is," he says.

"It pulls data out that doesn't actually exist, so it creates the data in that product, and that's what sets us apart.

"Let's say you and I both had the same products listed online. If your product was as you have it and our product was the one that we've created data for, obviously this would make our product a lot more attractive to the marketplaces and consumers because they would actually know what they're buying."

The initial focus was on high-end luxury brands like Prada and Dolce & Gabbana, but in May 2020 "luxury fashion kind of died", according to Wood.

"We then started pushing fast, affordable fashion. It grew exactly the same way as the luxury fashion did - even more so - and it was really the technology piece and the sales channels behind it that enabled those brands to grow," he says.

The Australian market now accounts for around half of Azura's sales, selling its suppliers' stock via 10 e-commerce marketplaces domestically.

Wood also sees significant opportunities to service more international markets, backed as well by a partnership with DHL Express which has been Azura's "go-to to get through customs in a fast, efficient manner". The process works by the company sending the shipping label to the brand, Azura then picks the products up and ships them to the end customer.

The entrepreneur also plans to boost the Azura Runway brand itself, which is currently only promoted in Australia and accounts for just 5 per cent of sales in the fast-growing group.

"There's two goals, because the business is a hybrid model. Azura Runway is the website itself and we would love that to be at a FarFetch (NYSE: FTCH) level where it's a destination site for luxury fashion," he says.

"For the omni-channel approach on marketplaces we want to continue until we're on 95 per cent of all marketplaces worldwide, but also taking Australian fashion brands to the world.

"We want to get all the boutiques and brands into our platform, and then send them across the world into the US, Europe, everywhere.

"As far as we can see, no one else is doing that, and a lot of fashion brands we work with are struggling at the moment with obviously COVID and bricks and mortar, but e-commerce requires very little marketing on their side and it gives them access to customers they've never had access to otherwise."

Path to profitability

Wood says if the founders wanted to they could make Azura profitable today, but to achieve their global ambitions they need to reinvest and put capital into its scale-up.

The group is currently owned by both the co-founders, but they are now set to dilute their stake by 10 per cent through a crowd-sourced funding (CSF) round to raise $1 million, in a bid to supercharge growth.

He expects the extra fund raising will also help with the cash flow challenges of the business as many online marketplaces can have payment terms of up to 90 days, meaning Azura often has cash tied up in their accounts that can't be immediately accessed.

"If we just left it as is now with the existing marketplaces, we're profitable now, but because we are trying to continue to grow there are more marketplaces and more suppliers, and we'll continue to build that up," he says.

"At the moment we're growing at around 34 per cent month-on-month. For us the machine is built, the technology is built, and there are roughly 1,000 marketplaces worldwide that work in the fashion space.

"The lasting impacts of COVID-19 travel restrictions, combined with the growing prominence of younger generation luxury consumers, have driven the success of global e-commerce platforms."

According to a study by Bain, online sales of luxury goods last year skyrocketed at a pace equivalent to five years of growth, doubling its market share from 12 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in 2020. Younger generations are expected to drive 180 per cent of the growth in the market from 2019 to 2025.

"Azura is delivering luxury and fashion to consumers and showcasing Australian designers to the world. With a view to IPO in the future, this raise will enable us to grow even faster and realise our market potential," he says. 

See full article here https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/aussie-fashion-tech-azura-weaves-suppliers-into-global-e-commerce-fabric.html

December 07, 2022 — Sam Wood
First The Iconic, then the world: Azura raises $2m with pre-loved luxury a driving force of growth

First The Iconic, then the world: Azura raises $2m with pre-loved luxury a driving force of growth

After launching its Pre-Loved by Azura Reborn second-hand luxury fashion offering on The Iconic earlier this month, Azura Fashion Group has now closed a $2 million seed round aimed at rolling out the circular economy initiative to customers worldwide. The round was backed by investors including Utiliti Ventures, Halkin Ventures, Jefferson Capital Partners and Archangel Ventures. Co-founded by Tim Bloore and Sam Wood in 2019, Azura began as an AI and machine learning-driven curation service feeding luxury fashion brands into global e-commerce marketplaces, with operations in the US, the UK, continental Europe and Southeast Asia. But just as e-commerce growth started to slow down in FY22, it dawned on the company's co-founders that their technology could be applied to a growing demand for pre-loved clothing and bags, which would be both more sustainable and practical for its customers and retail partners. "One of the biggest hurdles we came across was returns. We had a lot of returns coming in and just sitting on the balance sheet, so we looked at different ways of how to liquidate those returns," says Wood, who on the same day as the exclusive launch with The Iconic happened to win the 2022 Sydney Young Entrepreneur - Fashion & Design Award. "Second-hand clothing was starting to become bigger and bigger thing for us, and took up more revenue, so we basically enabled all of our returns to be sold as pre-loved and they just took off.

"Now 40 per cent of our business is secondhand clothing, so we're really enabling that whole circular economy."

With The Iconic adding to other exclusive partnerships Azura has such as Farfetch and Net-a-Porter, Wood believes the Azura Reborn label could represent the lion's share of sales within a few months, and definitely within a year.

"The Iconic have been very supportive of this, and this has been a deal that’s been in the works for nearly a year-and-a-half, so there were a lot of hurdles to go through to make sure we launched when we were fully ready," Wood tells Business News Australia.

"We have had a lot of retailers reach out to us that are wanting to do something very similar. It’s definitely an avenue that a lot of marketplaces and retailers are wanting to get on board with.

"We can enable other companies to become circular by helping them move their returns, helping them shift their products that have been opened and sitting in the warehouse, to stop these products ending up in landfill but also giving businesses another way to generate income."

He says the funding will help Azura in its mission to become the "number one distributor of circular fashion in Australia", providing free cash flow to boost capacity, warehousing, inventory and sales.

"What we’re rolling out in January will be a buyback system so customers will be able to sell their secondhand luxury bags back to Azura or through different avenues, and we would be able to purchase those bags upfront," he said.

"Rather than them saying ‘I want to sell this bag’ and us listing it on our platform and when they get sold, we’ll pay, what we're enabling customers to do is sell back to Azura, and we’ll purchase those bags straight away and we'll be selling them to retailers all over the world.

"This money allows us to expand that reach too in sales and operations. For example we’re currently selling across 60  retailers around the world now. Our goal is to be selling across 100 retailers by middle of next year.

"We are very, very small in the early days, and we’ve only been operating since April 2019, but we’ve been growing at quite an amazing rate so we’ve got a huge way to go yet."

View the full article here https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/first-the-iconic--then-the-world--azura-raises--2m-with-pre-loved-luxury-a-driving-force-of-growth.html

 

December 07, 2022 — Sam Wood