Rescue by Relove is doing away with the idea of “reject” clothing to make minor defects covetable

Born out of both brands wanting to liquidate their inventory and consumers looking for affordable pieces, Rescue by Relove is making clothes with minor defects fashionable again

Indians are no strangers to the concept of sustainability when it comes to apparel. Even at the most basic level, most of us have grown up seeing how to get the most number of wears out of any item of clothing. In contrast, thrifting is a culture that we are slowly but surely taking to as we learn more about how “each garment resold, saves upto six times its weight in carbon dioxide”.

Thrifting–or buying pre-loved items of clothing–is no longer a fad but a necessity in today’s world that estimates annual global fashion production at 150 billion garments (according to a study titled Sustainable Apparel Materials, conducted by Matter of Trust). Therefore, when Relove co-founders Kirti Poonia and Prateek Gupte decided to use technology to address the problem of making pre-loved clothing more accessible through their digital platform and app, they solely approached it from the point of view of scalability. Most recently, they have also ventured into the segment of factory rejects to make them reach consumers instead of landfills.

Driven by scalability and technology

“I understood the unproductiveness of the fashion industry. Out of 150 billion garments manufactured in the world, nine billion are [lying] idle in people’s closets. I could see the first-hand impact of this because there were customers that I had who had bought 100 garments from me, and had moved from a size XL to XS. Since they had nowhere to sell those clothes, they were just lying in their closets. Eighty billion garments are what we actually end up selling and four billion are just thrown away; the proof lies in every landfill we see around,” says Poonia, who has been a fashion entrepreneur and was the former CEO of Okhai, an artisan-centric fashion brand. Given her experience in the fashion industry, she wanted to use technology to create scalable impact with Relove and now, Rescue.

Combining Poonia’s early software engineering days and fashion experience with Gupte’s experience in artificial intelligence, Relove uses technology aimed at a scalable solution. Viewing sustainability through the lens of a social issue funded by CSR wings of companies was something that the founders of Relove wanted to avoid. A profitable business model, they believe, would encourage all parties to truly partake in the circular fashion economy. Alongside, the transparency that came from the brands directly taking part in the process ensures an element of accountability to consumers as well.

According to Poonia, with Rescue, this transparency rakes in more value as the defect in an item is mentioned clearly with pictures to support it. “While the brand makes a little bit of profit on an item, the buyer also earns back some of the money. But the best part is that all parties are doing something great for the planet, while making money, turning it from a burden to a growth channel,” said Poonia, while explaining the premise of Relove.

A profitable model for all parties

While some brands came on board from the point of view of aspiring for sustainability, a few also wanted to be aspirational for their  sustainability-conscious customers. The easiest brands to get on board were naturally the ones headed by like-minded individuals. “There were definitely some brands that thought that if they got on board with us, there would be a cannibalisation of their first-hand products. But we have data now to show that out of 100 people who bought Relove on a brand’s website, almost 50-70 per cent were new to the brand. This means that Relove has actually helped them in customer acquisition,” shares Poonia.

According to Poonia, the customers comprise three types of people–the sustainability folks; Gen Z consumers who can now afford these brands at lower prices and also believe in Relove; and the deal-seekers. “The return on ad-spend (ROAS) on Facebook and Instagram is 4-8 but on Relove, when brands give their seller store credit, they make around 12x-22x. So we have basically built in growth-features for the brands too,” says the founder of the platform, whose automated tools for marketing have also aided the process.

Manorath Dhillon, CEO, Okhai, believes that Relove has made their brand more accessible to people. “While those who couldn’t afford our brand otherwise were buying there, a lot of people actually approached us to launch Relove on our platform as they wanted to resell with them,” she explains. Okhai, according to Dhillon, has also acquired new customers through the process.

Beating the negative connotation of “reject” with “rescue”

Rescue was born out of Poonia and Gupte’s understanding of the existing concept of “reuse” and from brands asking for help to sell their damaged inventory. “The smaller brands, especially, had no way to liquidate this rejected stock and it caused a lot of bottlenecks. So the idea of Rescue came from the brands and it is actually selling two times faster,” says the co-founder. This, despite the spectrum of discounts being varied, with a lot of the brands experimenting to see what works.

According to Dhillon, inventory “is literally money that you are sitting on and it’s very difficult to liquidate”. Okhai’s work with artisans sees them work at set-ups with external factors that are sometimes out of their control . “For example, a female artisan in a village might have a kid playing and then there could be a small stain on what she is making. Rescue makes it easy to sell these pieces, not only because of the low price for these but also for telling these stories that make handmade products truly special. Now, people want to buy these items for these stories,” she adds.

According to Poonia, for any brand, at least 5-10 per cent of what they make ends up being defective pieces. The defects range from common ones such as a weaving defect in handwoven fabric, chalk or pen marks left during the stitching, tiny holes and darkening of the fabric; while the items are sold as they are, with the brands also educating customers about how to repair them. Customers–according to their data–are happy to buy Rescue items, as long as the brands are transparent about the defect and offer a low price. “Our app enables transparency and a good price, with an algorithm in place to determine it. I think this is popular also because we take care of everything from packaging, logistics, customer care and fraud between the buyer and seller. All the pain for resale was taken away from the brand and we gave them back the power. What we make is the Relove fee that is transparently listed,” explains  Poonia.

Meanwhile, the best part of Rescue is perhaps the fact that artisans have learnt to not fear making mistakes. As Dhillon shares, “Artisans are also happy that despite them making these small mistakes, the items are selling. They would earlier feel very disheartened if they submitted a piece that had an issue but Rescue gives them more confidence to continue doing what they do.”

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