The tool allows J’evar’s jewelry designers to input information about the product’s materials and specifications, and the generative AI will produce an image of that product. The tool saves the brand weeks of manual design time on products, says Amish Shah, founder and CEO of the direct-to-consumer brand of jewelry featuring lab-grown diamonds.

J’evar began using its jewelry product AI generator last year in 2022. The retailer feeds metrics and images into a knowledge bank — or a database of text, images and metrics for materials that include the weight of gold and silver, among other key details — for the generator to refer to before it produces an image. Shah jokingly refers to it as “JevarGPT 1.0” and “AI for Jewelry 1.0,” the former a reference to OpenAI consortium’s ChatGPT.

For example, Shah says if he wanted to make a bangle, he could input a text prompt to the generative AI, specifying how much the weight of gold should be for that piece, how thin or wide it should be and what design style he would like. He can even ask it to produce 50 iterations from that single prompt. In return, the generative AI will output complete designs, some of which might be ready to turn into tangible products. Other product designs the AI outputs require J’evar designers to modify the design until it can be producible.

Shah says one key reason J’evar can’t produce all the designs is because of the inability to cut diamonds into the shape the AI generates. But even this ability is coming soon with new machinery, he says.

Exploring generative AI for design

“You’re looking at optimization, efficiency, speed — which is of course going to lead to cost reduction in the longer term,” Shah says about using generative AI. “But importantly, from an output perspective, we’re looking at precision and a higher level of creativity.”

In the past few years, developers have trained artificial intelligence to do more than analyze data and tell its users what to make of the data. They’ve trained AI to generate writing, images, videos and sounds. This is called generative AI, and online retailers have already begun to design new products and produce new variations of existing products — and do so quickly. With generative AI, retailers can create and test multiple product ideas in just minutes, much faster than the weeks or months it might take to design now. Online retailers, including J’evar and Auricle Technology, are learning how to use generative AI to assist their product designers, making the process more efficient. But because generative AI is still new, it has limitations on what it can do.

J’evar uses its own generative AI technology to help its human designers speed up the creative process.

Gen AI’s value outshines its current limitations

While generative AI is excellent for learning and processing massive amounts of data, it is not yet at a point that it can understand movement through space, says Brendan Witcher, vice president and principal analyst at research firm Forrester. It doesn’t think about engineering and structural elements or physical viability yet, he says. Although generative AI is not at that point yet, he says, that doesn’t mean it can’t be eventually.

“You want to design a shoe. Great,” Witcher says. “Well, a shoe’s a shoe until you put it on and have to run in it, then it falls apart on you because you didn’t think about the physics of how movement happens.

“The big question is when do we bridge the gap between the work that needs to be put into generative AI to understand the movement through physical space that objects need to go through often, and the commercial viability of doing that.”

Informed assessments

However, even with its current limitations, Witcher says generative AI’s value comes from the assessments it already has learned to make. He says people do their jobs based on the knowledge they receive in their training, and “AI kind of works like that too.” But generative AI “takes it to the next step” and looks at more data than humans can process, and then make assessments about what the best subsequent steps are. It can also come up with ideas humans couldn’t or wouldn’t think of because the human mind doesn’t process information the way artificial intelligence tools can, he says.

“We can’t absorb that much data and extract from it an idea. It’s just impossible for us,” Witcher says. “It shouldn’t be lost that just developing an image of something that you wouldn’t be able to think of because you weren’t trained to think that way has huge possibilities.”

Witcher says generative AI’s value extends beyond production speed to unique creations.

“A lot of people talk about generating imagery with AI, but what to me is most important is the ability to do it over and over and over again until you get something you like,” Witcher says.

Will generative AI replace human designers?

Generative AI is not here to replace humans in the design phase, Shah says. Especially not in the jewelry industry.

“Human intelligence supersedes artificial intelligence, at least I can say that for jewelry,” Shah says.

Generative AI is more like an assistant to human designer, Shah says. It’s not the technology that’s telling designers when a piece has been finalized. It’s a human making that decision, Shah says. Just like Adobe and Corel are graphics software tools for designers, generative AI is a design tool, not a human replacement, he says.

“Once we get the initial output, it is then modified to be producible,” Shah says.

Forrester’s Witcher agrees that AI should be used as a tool and not a replacement for creative individuals.

“If all the people learn how to do things on generative AI, then no one learns how to do it beyond generative AI,” Witcher says. “Over time, you start weeding out the expertise from the low-level individuals and nobody becomes a high-level individual.”

Witcher adds that the majority of AI use isn’t leaving artificial intelligence “to its own devices.”

“It’s more assisted intelligence — the AI standing for assisted intelligence — where we’re using it to be more productive in our own jobs that we currently do today,” Witcher says.

J’evar uses generative AI to speed up the design process

Traditionally, Shah says, jewelry design is a long process that can take a few weeks or even more than a month. In the case of commissioned designs, J’evar designers would first have to understand what kind of product a customer wants before going into iterations. In the example of designing a bangle, the designers would have to first determine if a customer wanted a wide cuff or something they could stack, something lightweight or heavy, thick or thin, if they wanted diamonds or gemstones, and so on.

Then, the designers would do initial mockups to ensure they understood the customer’s request correctly. This process would typically be one to three weeks of showing designs to the customer and sketching accordingly, Shah says.

In one case, Shah says he and his team had gone through 55 variations before a customer said, “I love it.” After that, his team would then go to computer-aided design (CAD). From there, it would go to rendering.

“By using AI, we are able to take that process down to pretty much hours and in some cases, literally within minutes,” Shah says.

Moreover, when working manually, the designer has to move every single diamond into place, making sure they are in the correct position. AI speeds up that process, Shah says. In milliseconds, the generative AI processor can move diamonds and gemstones, raise or lower gold weight, or change the width or thickness.

“It’s almost like putting a thousand designers and the type of work they would have done into the knowledge bank and then letting the system do a combination from those thousand designs to give you back results,” he says.

J’evar fed years’ worth of jewelry data into its generative AI platform. The platform produces images that human designers then adjust in the design phase.

Developing a custom generative AI processor

Shah says his family’s 90-year history in the jewelry business gives him an advantage over others in developing custom generative AI technology for J’evar.

“It sounds complex, but you have to keep in mind: We’re in the business,” Shah says. “We’re in the jewelry business, so the core bank or the core information that’s required is sitting with us. It’s not something I have to go outside and source.”

J’evar feeds text and imagery into its generative AI to teach it what to output. When inputting prompts, J’evar designers primarily use text to generate an image.

“That knowledge bank is sitting there,” Shah says. “Now, it’s all about organizing it and feeding it into the system in a format that can then be analyzed and the GPUs can run and start combining things and getting them back to you.”

Iterations at scale

Sometimes, what generative AI produces needs less human modification than others. For example, Auricle Technology uses generative AI tools to swap out logos and colors on its different products.

Auricle Technology founder William Cooksey says he created his electronics accessory brand out of necessity. He uses Apple AirPods for long hours most days, and the hard plastic begins to hurt his ears after a while. That led him to create AirPod skins made from silicone that are softer and anchor better into his ears.

When his manufacturer sent back prototypes, it printed Auricle’s logo on them. That led Cooksey to realize the importance of branding and how he can “pivot and get into the licensing game.”

The direct-to-consumer brand launched in 2021 now creates customized merchandise including AirPod skins, AirPod charging case skins, phone cases, wireless chargers and mouse pads. And through licensing agreements, it prints these products with logos for more than 90 teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, as well as about 130 college teams.

Rather than have a designer manually change the colors and logos for each team, the brand has integrated generative AI into its design process, Cooksey says.

Unlike J’evar, however, Auricle does not have the budget nor the in-house capacity to develop an all-new generative AI engine. Its business model is also different, focusing on customization rather than new product development.

New technology, but make it affordable

Cooksey instead works with Goals Media Group to use generative AI into its product iterations. Goals uses technology Microsoft for Startups provides, says Goals founder and CEO Aubrey Flynn. This means it receives access to Microsoft’s resources, including technology and tech experts, among other benefits. Microsoft has announced it would invest $10 billion into OpenAI — the company behind text-based generative AI brand ChatGPT and image-based DALL-E.

Cooksey says his lead designer and Flynn determined generative AI was the way to go from designing products with one team logo to hundreds “in a short period of time without breaking the bank.”

Auricle also uses Goals and its generative AI offerings to develop marketing materials like images for social media that highlight products from different teams at different stadiums. The generative AI creates an image complete with Auricle branding, the team’s branding, and any copy it needs.

“Being a small business, not having a lot of capital, it’s really exciting me that we can still come up with quality images without breaking our budget,” Cooksey says.

“When you deal with those leagues, they want you to be able to launch all the teams at the same time,” Cooksey says. “I just wouldn’t have been able to afford to do that.”

Generative AI’s impact on metrics

Goals has about 650 clients and nearly half are online retailers, Flynn says.

Flynn says that social media marketing creatives that generative AI produced can increase consumer interactions with the ad by more than 35% compared with that brand’s normal creative, according to data from its clients.

This includes creatives entirely generated through AI, visuals that already existed that AI has augmented, and copy that generative AI has helped develop for those types of visuals.

“I’ve seen AI-powered creative outperform to the extent where cost per click on a certain product may have been 30%-40% less expensive based on some of the guidance from AI on the copy and the imagery,” he says.

He adds that brands like Auricle — which lack access to capital, resources, infrastructure and more that large brands have — need to adopt technology like generative AI early on because it’s less expensive than some alternatives like hiring designers or manufacturers from the start.

Early results are insightful, but ‘is this just another buzzword?’

Shah, Cooksey, Witcher and Flynn all expressed the same idea: It may be early, but the application of generative AI in product development is promising.

While some may say generative AI is another buzzword, Witcher says what separates this technology from other tech fads is that companies are already allowing individuals in their organizations to play with, understand and experiment with generative AI.

“They’re almost crowd-sourcing proof of concept,” Witcher says. “It’s a unique characteristic to generative AI that it’s so easy to do and work with that almost anybody can do it.”

Although results are limited in some ways and sometimes imperfect, online retailers are using generative AI imaging to design new products essentially from scratch, customize existing products and develop marketing content. They can develop multiple iterations of these images at once or continue iterating on the same image multiple times until they’re satisfied with how the image looks. They can then take the design that generative AI produces and tweak it manually, saving them the time of doing each iteration manually — and saving them the creative energy it takes just to design a new product iteration.

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GE Renewable Energy has launched a B2B marketplace featuring 100,000 products from more than 30 sellers. The Renewable energy division is a part of GE Vernona, which operates and services 54,000 wind turbines and 7,000 gas turbines worldwide.

GE B2B marketplace

The available inventory includes wind turbine products from GE and other original equipment manufacturers. Specifically, the GE B2B marketplace specializes in onshore wind spare parts, including parts for all major wind turbines and additional items such as tooling, safety gear and office supplies.

Digital features are available on the marketplace tools for payments, securing financing, cashflow management and invoicing among others.

“We’re excited to launch this expanded online platform,” says GE Verona chief commercial officer Uzair Memon. “We’ve heard a lot of feedback from our customer base that it would help them to be able to access both GE and other OEM parts all in one location.”

GE Renewable Energy says it is a $16 billion business that operates in 80 countries. Its products and services include onshore and offshore wind, blades, hydro, storage, utility-scale solar programs.

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“We’ve seen our customers pass down clothing within family and friends and from generation to generation,” she says.

The brand also noticed it was popular on other resale platforms. Hanna Andersson wanted to offer its own peer-to-peer reseller marketplace. It wanted a “seamless integration,” Carter says. The brand turned to Archive. The software platform allows brands to customize its own secondhand marketplace website.

It’s a move that other retailers are making, with $177 billion in secondhand global sales in 2022, according to ThredUp’s 2023 resale report. Resale continues to grow, as the report projects the secondhand industry will nearly double to $351 billion in global sales by 2027. The same data predicts resale goods will account for 10% of all clothing in 2024.

Since launching Hanna-Me-Downs, resellers have listed more than 55,000 items on the website.

Hanna-Me-Downs is an online resale marketplace

Hanna-Me-Downs launched in February 2023. Sales for the resale store were four times higher during the first month than expected. The average seller sells about 10 items. Sellers receive cash or Hanna Andersson gift cards. They receive 125% of the value of their sale price if they choose store credit.

Cash recipients receive 70% of the sale price. Hanna Andersson and Archive declined to disclose how the remaining 30% is split between Archive and the brand. Archive charges a monthly software-as-a-service fee and a percentage of sales.

Since February, 90% of sellers have chosen a credit option, Carter says. Since launching Hanna-Me-Downs, customers have spent more than 200% of their credit value on Hanna Andersson’s main direct to consumer website.

Reselling online

Carter says the retailer has acquired new customers through its resale site. The retailer offers apparel items like children’s baby zip sleeper in organic cotton. This item retails for $42.00 but costs about $13.00 to $20.00 on the resale site.

Archive asks sellers to describe any defects or problems with items they plan to resell on the Hanna-Me-Downs resale store.

Archive built a condition-grading tool for sellers to indicate if there are any flaws with clear descriptions.

While most items indicate that the condition is “excellent with no major issues,” other items with more flaws are priced accordingly. A Circle Pocket Dress in French Terry retailed for $50.00 but was priced as $10.00 on the resale website because “item has a minor stain.”

The goal is to be as transparent as possible. This dress is noted by the seller to have a “minor stain” and is priced at $10.

It’s important to be transparent about the condition of items, says Emily Gittins, CEO and co-founder of Archive. Archive “owns” the customer service portion of the resale site, she says.

“We take on the technological development and customer service burden of managing the marketplace,” Gittins says. Most brands are able to launch their reseller website within a couple of months, she says.

How resale fashion works through Archive

Brands provide Archive with product data. Sellers enter the style ID of an item found on the care label. Sellers can input the SKU from the garment they purchased. In some cases, if there is no tag, the seller can name the item by searching.

The seller is then prompted to answer questions about the item’s condition. This includes whether it’s been worn, is missing buttons or has broken zippers. Sellers are then asked to upload photos of the actual item they plan to sell.

The software’s pricing algorithm takes into consideration the demand for an item and the condition. Online resellers can also adjust the price if it’s an item they will only sell for a certain price, Gittins says.

‘Second Hand September’

In efforts to promote donating, reusing and rewearing clothing items, Archive is working with brands like  M.M.LaFleur, DVF (Diane Von Furstenberg), Faherty and ba&sh, among others to encourage customers to upload items to the retailers’ resale sites during Second Hand September.

Hanna Andersson Corp. ranks No. 477 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales.

“Since September marks both New York Fashion Week and back-to-school, most fashion brands focus on newness during the month,” Gittins said in a statement. “That makes September the perfect time for forward-thinking brands to establish a new narrative by spotlighting their resale offerings.”

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According to KnownHost, a private web hosting company, Casetify tops the list of worst CO2 emitters. Every web page view produces 12.18 grams of CO2 emissions. Casetify sells tech accessories for products such as phone and laptop cases.

Websites emit carbon dioxide through web-hosting servers. These retrieve data from databases and deliver content to users’ browsers. Energy is often from fossil-fuel-based sources. Data centers house the web servers and networking infrastructure needed to run websites. This requires electricity to keep equipment cool. Many websites use content delivery networks (CDNs), which send content from different locations worldwide. This results in additional energy needed to keep those servers running. Hardware pieces for internet infrastructure (like routers and switches) transmit data, therefore using energy. And user devices, like smartphones and laptops, also use energy, according to KnownHost.

Casetify website tops list of carbon emitters

To put that in perspective, after over a year with 10,000+ monthly page views, Casetify produces the amount of carbon that 67 trees absorb in a year, or 3,306 kWh of energy (which can drive an electric car 21,158 kilometers), according to website carbon calculator Website Carbon. Digital Commerce 360 reached out to Casetify but did not receive a response regarding the findings.

There are more than 5.18 billion people using the internet worldwide, according to Statista. And the number of consumers shopping online continues to grow.

Casetify has a landing page on its website regarding its “key initiatives” to offset its carbon footprint. Actions include using 50% recycled materials and eco-friendly ink, 100% compostable packaging and sustainability-certified facilities. Some direct-to-consumer retail brands are among the top 10 producers of CO2 emissions per visit.

Casetify is followed by:

• Taco Bell (9.46 grams of CO2 emissions)
• Newegg (3.9 grams)
• West Elm (3.01 grams)
• Wayfair LLC (2.79 grams)
• Eddie Bauer LLC (2.51 grams)

Williams Sonoma website produces lowest carbon emissions per website visit

Williams Sonoma produces the lowest carbon footprint with 0.01 grams of CO2 per web page visit. The retailer is followed by Pottery Barn (subsidiary of Williams Sonoma Inc. (0.01 grams), JCPenney (0.04 grams), Nordstrom Inc. (0.06 grams), Aldo (0.13 grams), and Best Buy Co. Inc. (0.13 grams).

Amazon tops list of companies producing most CO2 per month

The top 10 companies total operations producing the most CO2 per month include Amazon.com Inc., with 400,082,802 total grams of CO2 emitted per month. Amazon emitted 71.27 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022, down 0.4% from the previous year, according to Amazon’s annual sustainability report. The company has pledged to cancel out or offset its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions warming the Earth by 2040. Emissions are up about 40% since Amazon set this goal in 2019. That is due in part because of the surge of business in 2020 during the pandemic.

Amazon is No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s new 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report. The Global Online Marketplaces database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

Amazon is also No. 1 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 database. The Top 1000 ranks North American web merchants by sales.

In addition to Amazon, the top 10 producing the most emissions per month are:

• Taco Bell (107,150,137 grams)
• Target Corp. (84,433,296 grams)
• TripAdvisor (65,606,844 grams)
• eBay Inc. (53,540,341 grams)
• Walmart Inc. (45,943,738 grams)
• Etsy Inc. (35,252,889 grams)
• Nike Inc. (35,047,824 grams)
• Wayfair (32,446,202 grams)
• Lowe’s Co. Inc. (31,670,270 grams)

It was surprising to see West Elm rank sixth in the top 10 websites with the most CO2 produced per visit (3.01 grams), said Daniel Pearson, CEO, KnownHost.

Top Top five companies producing the least CO2 per month:

• Williams Sonoma (21,517 grams)
• Pottery Barn (37,842 grams)
• Aldo (68,845 grams)
• Cesar’s Way (116,421 grams)
• Charlotte Tilbury (169,037 grams)
• NYX Professional Makeup (169,067 grams)

“Especially, as it’s owned by Williams Sonoma Inc. and both Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn — another Williams-Sonoma  [Inc.] retailer – are ranked joint first for the websites with the lowest CO2 produced per visit (0.01 grams),” he said.

“This can highlight differences in their sustainability practices and provide insight into their environmental performance,” Pearson said. “When retailers within the same parent company produce different CO2 emissions, it presents an opportunity for knowledge sharing and collaboration.”

KnownHost used a seed list of America’s Top 100 online stores in 2023 from software shipment tracker Aftership. KnownHost ran online stores’ websites through the Website Carbon Calculator individually. Each store’s monthly traffic levels were recorded using SaaS company Ahrefs, which is an SEO tool used to search for growing website search traffic. This was multiplied by the amount of CO2 produced per visit to determine the overall amount of CO2 produced each month. The number of trees it takes to absorb CO2 emissions was calculated using a figure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

How can retailers change tactics?

Once known, retailers can reassess and implement strategies to help reduce their carbon emissions, Pearson said.

“They can look at optimizing website efficiency by streamlining the website’s code and design to reduce page load time and server energy consumption,” he said.

Also, websites should compress images, use caching and minimize HTTP requests, he said. 

Retailers can search for eco-friendly web-hosting services that rely on renewable energy sources to power their servers and offer customers the option to voluntarily offset their shipping emissions by contributing to verified carbon offsetting projects, Pearson said.

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The Seattle-based giant emitted 71.27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022. That’s down 0.4% from the previous year, Amazon said in its annual sustainability report, published July 18. The company achieved the improvement by using more solar and wind to power its operations. It benefited from a decrease in emissions from construction and third-party transportation.

Amazon in recent years has been the biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity. It uses power purchase agreements to fund development of new solar and wind farms across the globe. Emissions related to electricity purchases fell 29% last year.

Amazon is No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s new 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report. The Global Online Marketplaces database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

Amazon is also No. 1 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 database. The Top 1000 ranks North American web merchants by sales.

Amazon carbon emissions

The company has pledged to wipe out or offset its contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet by 2040. It has also invited other companies to make similar commitments to join what it calls the Climate Pledge. Emissions are up by about 40% since Amazon set the target in 2019. That’s fueled in part by supercharged sales during the pandemic.

But Amazon says its carbon intensity is down 24% during the same period, thanks to the renewables push and the addition of about 9,000 electric vehicles to Amazon’s delivery fleet, among other factors. Carbon intensity is a measure of how much the company emits for every dollar of merchandise sold. Slowing ecommerce growth also helped Amazon cut its carbon emissions for the first time. The company’s revenue grew 9.4% in 2022, a record low.

Sustainability report

The sustainability report comes months after Amazon quietly backed away from the biggest interim goal it had laid out on the road to decarbonizing its logistics business. Called Shipment Zero, the effort was supposed to make half of the company’s shipments carbon-free by 2030, but Amazon retracted it with a brief online statement. Some employees denounced the move during a rally in May outside company headquarters. Amazon said the interim target “no longer made sense” given the Climate Pledge’s more expansive target.

For years, Amazon lagged behind its peers in carbon emissions reporting. But, amid pressure from employees and shareholder groups, the company has stepped up in recent years. It discloses more about its impact and empowering a sustainability team to invest in technologies aimed at curbing carbon emissions.

Criticism about Amazon carbon emissions reporting

Critics say Amazon still undercounts its impact and cheapens its net-zero goal by excluding emissions produced by manufacturers Amazon purchases goods from directly, as well as independent merchants who sell the majority of products on its retail site. In its public accounting of so-called Scope 3 emissions, the company only includes the impact of Amazon-branded products, which the company has said account for about 1% of sales.

In their own Scope 3 carbon accounting, Amazon rivals Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. both estimate the impact of all the items sold from their shelves, making their carbon bills seem artificially large compared with Amazon’s. Walmart’s sales were about 22% higher than Amazon’s in 2021. But because Walmart includes a much wider set of products in its carbon accounting, the Bentonville, Arkansas, company’s Scope 3 emissions were more than twice as large as those at Amazon.

Amazon has said it excludes products from its vendors to avoid double-counting of emissions tracked and reported by those manufacturers. But beginning in 2024, Amazon says it will update its supply-chain standards to require suppliers to share their carbon emissions data with the company and set their own carbon goals.

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“Polybags are the worst thing in the world. Everyone hates them but they are a necessary evil,” says Steve McCann, marketing director at Toad and Co.

Polybags are the clear plastic bags the nearly all apparel items are shipped in. But brands can’t just get rid of them without a replacement. Retailers need something to shield a garment from the elements as it makes its way through a warehouse on a belt, being picked, packed and shipped and making its way on a ship, truck or van or all three to a store or to a shopper’s doorstep, where it may encounter rain, snow and sleet. If the product gets damaged at any point, it will be thrown out.

“The lifecycle of ruining a garment versus the lifecycle of a polybag is much worse,” McCann says.

Since Toad and Co. started selling online in 2014, the brand went from using one traditional polybag, to optimizing the design to be more sustainable in five different sizes. It aims to eliminate polybags completely by 2024.

Shipping a ‘better’ polybag

The brand’s first iteration of making its polybags more sustainable was shrinking the standard width of each polybag to better fit its garments. What’s more, instead of using one larger polybag that would hold any of its products, it invested in polybags of different sizes so that each bag fits the garment, reducing the plastic required. It also thinned out the plastic to further minimize the amount of plastic used.

Steve McCann, marketing director at Toad and Co.

In addition, Toad and Co. changed the location of the airholes on its polybags. It moved them from the bottom of the bag to the top and alerted shoppers these polybags could be reused to pick up dog waste, McCann says.

And even after all these efforts, the retailer is working to eliminate all these polybags.

One alternative packaging retailers use is a compostable polybag made out of plant-based materials. These bags, however, have mixed reviews from vendors and merchants. While compostable materials could be better environmentally than single-use plastic, it’s challenging for consumers to get the bag to the proper facility. A consumer would have to drop them off at a collection point that takes this specific material. If a consumer throws out this material it could emit more methane in a landfill than other types of trash, according to several vendors, analysts and retailers. And if a consumer puts the bag in the normal recycling bin, it could clog and contaminate the normal recycling process, causing the entire batch of recycling to end up in a landfill.

Toad and Co. switches to paper polybags

Because of these issues, in 2020 Toad & Co. started working with packaging vendor Vela to pilot its paper polybags. They are made of  Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper and can be recycled with mixed paper. This makes them much more likely to actually get recycled than a compostable bag. FSC is a nonprofit organization that ensures the paper is from a forest that is responsibly managed for environmental, economic and social benefits.

After piloting the paper polybags with a few products, the retailer confirmed they were sturdy enough to protect its garments and of the same quality as a traditional polybag, and began rolling them out across all of its products. Once the brand hits a certain minimum order volume of products at each of its factories, it makes the switch to using this product. As of Q2 2023, about 82% of its products use the alternative polybag and by spring 2024, 100% of them will, McCann says.

Toad and Co.’s shoppers have not commented on the switch in materials, but its wholesale accounts have reacted positively, McCann says. When brands ship items to stores, just like to a shopper’s home, each garment is encased in a polybag. Store employees open each bag and hang the garments up.

“They see it more so than anyone else, this is so much waste and so much plastic,” McCann says.

About 50% of Toad and Co.’s sales are direct-to-consumer online and the other half are wholesale to retailers, he says.

A more dramatic alternative: reusable packaging

To further lower its carbon footprint, Toad and Co. also gives shoppers the option to have their orders shipped in a reusable package. With vendor LimeLoop, Toad and Co. rents weatherproof bags. The bags are made of recycled polyester, mostly old billboards, on the outside. They have a zipper closure instead of tape and are recycled cotton on the inside.

For each LimeLoop medium bag, a retailer reduces 92% of carbon dioxide emissions and 99% of water use compared with shipping that order in a medium size cardboard box, according to LimeLoop. Similarly, for each LimeLoop small bag, a retailer reduces 42% of its carbon dioxide emissions and 9% of its water use compared with a polymailer plastic bag, according to the vendor.

The retailer piloted LimeLoop in 2018 and was one of its first clients. Its relationship ebbed and flowed throughout the years, as Toad and Co. has paused and resumed the service as it replatformed its ecommerce site and moved warehouses.

Here’s how it works: On the checkout page, shoppers can choose four shipping options, free standard, free standard with a LimeLoop mailer bag, paid second day or paid next day. If a shopper selects the LimeLoop option, her order will arrive in a reusable bag with instructions on how to return the bag. Once the shopper decides if she is keeping her entire order or is returning items, she visits ToadandCo.com to print a free return label. She puts the label it in the front sleeve of the bag and can drop it off in any U.S. postal service mailbox.

Toad and Co. commits to less packaging by sending orders in reusable bags.

Toad and Co. shoppers use LimeLoop

About 12-15% of Toad and Co.’s online shoppers select the LimeLoop package option, and 20% of those who chose LimeLoop as their fulfillment method, choose it again, McCann says. These are healthy numbers, McCann says, especially when considering how many new customers Toad and Co. has, he says without revealing more. For non-LimeLoop orders, Toad and Co. ships products in a 100% recycled paper mailer with water-based inks to ensure shoppers can recycled the bag.

Unlike thinning its polybags and increasing the number of polybag sizes it uses, the LimeLoop sustainable packaging is highly visible to the customer and something Toad and Co. receives a lot of positive feedback on, McCann says.

“It’s something that people when they look out their window, they get it. They get how many boxes they get from Amazon that you can’t even fit it all in your recycling bin anymore,” McCann says. “[Shoppers] understand it’s an issue, but they don’t see anyone doing anything about it. But they also love the convenience of [online shopping] and are not willing to change the convenience aspects. I think when brands have an option and it’s different and it’s addressing the issue, they love it and grab on to it.”

Printing the return label is a barrier for shoppers to using the service, McCann says. It is still working on the logistics of getting its systems to talk to each other to include the label with the package and how that would work if a shopper decides to return any number of items. LimeLoop says most of its clients include the return label with a package. LimeLoop has 45 online retail clients, mostly small businesses with annual revenue less than $5 million.

Challenges in getting the LimeLoop bags back

It takes about two weeks from when Toad and Co. ships an order to when it receives the bag back, a speed the retailer is continually trying to get faster, McCann says. The more it can reuse the bags, the better.

If Toad and Co. can use a LimeLoop package twice in one month, it breaks even in cost compared with traditional packaging. Otherwise, this shipping method is more expensive, McCann says without revealing more. LimeLoop rents the bags to retailers for about $1 per bag per month, and they can be used at least 200 times, the vendor says. So far in 2023, Toadandco.com has hit the twice-a-month frequency for each bag.

“Our benchmark KPI is that turnaround time,” McCann says.

When Toad and Co. first started using LimeLoop bags, it had trouble getting shoppers to return the bags, as some thought they were theirs to keep.

“The biggest part of the pilot learning was about the returns and how to communicate with customers,” McCann says.

In surveys, Toad and Co. learned that shoppers may take a few days to open their package once it arrives and then a few days to try on items and then decide what they want to keep. Then they have to print a label, which they may have to leave their house to do, and then put the bag in the mail. This all takes time.

About 12-15% of Toad and Co.’s online shoppers select the LimeLoop package option.

Toad and Co. learned that it needed to communicate urgency about returning the bags and educate shoppers in its emails about the importance of sending the bag back quickly in order for the process to be a sustainable option.

Communication with customers

In the five years since piloting the feature, industry standards have changed around communication with shoppers, McCann says. Previously, Toad and Co. hesitated to email customers more than three times a week, but now it has no issue contacting shoppers every day, McCann says. It can automatically send reminder emails via LimeLoop, as its systems know which customers haven’t returned their bags yet.

The vendor says some of its clients charge a few dollars as a deposit to customers to use the LimeLoop bag that retailers refund once they receive the bag back in the mail.

“This helps to keep the reusable packages always in motion and many clients utilize this feature,” a LimeLoop spokesperson says.

Bernardine Wu, executive managing director of digital strategy at digital consultancy OSF Digital, says LimeLoop is an interesting packaging vendor to watch, as it provides a sustainable packaging initiative that can scale and make an impact.

Integrating LimeLoop

It took a few months to integrate LimeLoop into all of the systems, McCann says. The retailer has done this twice, once when it launched, and then again in 2022 after a few months of program pause while it replatformed to a Shopify ecommerce site and moved warehouses.

When a shopper selects LimeLoop, the warehouse needs to know which order is selected for that package, as does its ordering platform, and shipping and return vendors. All of these integrations have to be built into its systems.

The merchant also had to learn how many shoppers would actually choose this option and how that correlates to how many LimeLoop bags it needs. Initially, Toad and Co. had 400 bags and it would frequently run out of them. Then, it couldn’t offer the option to shoppers until it received a bag back. In 2022 it invested in more bags for now a total of 2,800 and it no longer runs outs of bags.

Even though the system seems complex, Toad and Co. is happy with the program and the customer response. When Toad and Co. communicates to shoppers about the program either via email or on social media, those communication pieces always receive lots of feedback, McCann says.

While it wants to encourage more shoppers to choose this option, it is going to leave it at that, an option, McCann says.

“We can encourage and education and let people make an educated decision on what they want to do,” McCann says.

Toad and Co. is No. 1623 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Next 1000.

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Beflax sells $300 linen sheets, and sustainability is one of its brand values. Many online luxury shoppers have come to expect an online package to arrive with ample tissue padding sealed with branded stickers, paper filler and ink branding on the box, says Katerina Rothman, founder and CEO of Beflax Linen.

“I want to give the best experience to customers,” Rothman says. “They are paying on average $300 per set, and people want to see the value — even in the box when they are receiving and opening it. There is still a missing link in the majority of consumers. Even if they are more sustainably minded and ecofriendly, they still want to have this luxury experience of all this tissue paper and opening a nice slick box.”

Initially, Beflax shipped its orders in an unbranded cardboard box — Rothman refused to use a plastic bag — with recyclable craft tape instead of plastic tape and extra tissue paper to connote a luxury unboxing experience.

Katerina Rothman, founder and CEO, Beflax Linen

“It’s against my principles to put the product into plastic bags or plastic tape over the boxes,” Rothman says.

Often, when a box is branded with too much ink, it can no longer be recycled. Rothman was close to signing a contract for custom boxes that included Beflax branding while still recyclable, but she decided against it.

“The price was good, but the part was killing me — there was no guarantee the factory in China was working up to ecofriendly standards,” Rothman says. “And it logically didn’t make sense to me to ship products from across the world.”

Beflax is based in Denver and manufactures its linen sheets in Portugal.

How shipping with LimeLoop works

In Q3 2022, a colleague introduced Rothman to LimeLoop packaging. The vendor provides reusable ecommerce packaging to retailers. The bags are made of recycled polyester, mostly old billboards, on the outside, have a zipper closure instead of tape and are a recycled cotton on the inside. On the outside, the package has a sleeve for the retailer to insert the shipping information, instead of using a sticky label.

After a few weeks of negotiating and a month of implementation, Beflax started using the LimeLoop bags as its packaging. Here’s how it works: Beflax ships all its products in one of three sizes of reusable bags to the shopper. The shopper receives the product, which includes a card for how to return the bag. The bag will have the return shipping label on the back of the main shipping label, which the shopper will flip over on the front of the package. The customer then mails this bag using any U.S. Postal Service box, and it will make its way back to Beflax.

Beflax ships all its products in one of three sized reusable LimeLoop bags for a luxury unboxing experience.

The bags can be reused at least 200 times. After that, LimeLoop will recycle them again into new reusable packages. Beflax rents the bags from LimeLoop for $1 per bag per month. Currently, Beflax rents 50 bags, which it can use multiple times per month. Beflax, which launched in 2017, has annual revenue around half a million dollars, Rothman says.

On average, it costs Beflax $16-18 to ship the product and about $4.50 for return shipping. Beflax absorbs some of these costs as it charges shoppers $15 for shipping. (Beflax provides free shipping for a consumer’s first order.)

Reusable packages works in practice for Beflax

The cost for Beflax is comparable to what it would cost the brand to purchase traditional shipping materials, including unbranded boxes, tissue paper, tape and sticky labels, she says. And the main return on investment, Rothman says, is that it’s the right thing to do.

For each LimeLoop medium bag, a retailer reduces 92% of carbon dioxide emissions and 99% of water use compared with shipping that order in a medium-sized cardboard box, according to LimeLoop. Similarly, for each small LimeLoop bag, a retailer reduces 42% of its carbon dioxide emissions and 9% of its water use compared with a polymailer plastic bag, according to the vendor.

Beflax has not conducted a poll about how shoppers feel about using the LimeLoop bags. Rothman, however, is confident the bag provides a luxury unboxing experience, describing the bags as slick with very nice inside fabric. The inside of the bags are so soft that the brand doesn’t wrap the sheets in any additional packaging, such as a polybag, Rothman says.

Beflax has not had an issue with shoppers returning the bags in the three quarters it has used the bags. If a customer is ever slow to return its packaging, Beflax contacts her reminding her to send it back, and she does.

Beflax also sells its products on Wayfair Inc., Etsy Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Because Beflax doesn’t receive the customer information when selling on these platforms, it does not use the LimeLoop bags and uses its previous, disposable packaging, without the extra tissue paper. It’s too big of a risk to send out bags without the shopper information, Rothman says.

Brands search for more sustainable but luxury unboxing

Bernardine Wu, executive managing director of digital strategy at digital consultancy OSF Digital, says LimeLoop is an interesting packaging vendor to watch, as it provides a sustainable packaging initiative that can scale and make an impact.

“Retailers and brands should focus on the approach that makes most sense and is most viable to their business, but at the same time, it is important to make sure that sustainability initiatives are aligned to the customer values, and it has to be a sincere and prioritized effort,” Wu says.

LimeLoop launched in 2018 and has 45 online retail clients, mostly small businesses with annual revenue less than $5 million. It does have some enterprise clients, with a handful in the pipeline, a spokesperson says without revealing more.

EcoPackables is another ecommerce vendor that provides sustainable packages to ecommerce merchants, including recycled plastic, recycled cardboard and compostable materials. EcoPackables has been in business for four years and has more than 100 enterprise clients, such as Ted Baker and Revolve, and more than 2,000 small businesses, many of which are Etsy sellers, that use its products. It does not count many luxury sellers in its client roster, however. Founder and CEO Shervin Dehmoubed says this is because many higher-end brands are reluctant to give up the extra tissue paper “garnish” in their packages.

“The reason why we don’t do high-end packaging is it goes against our ethos. The amount of waste in that packaging is crazy,” Dehmoubed says.

But Dehmoubed is hopeful that this might change as more brands want a better sustainability story and more consumers demand it. In fact, it may even come down to social media influencers not doing unboxings with confetti coming out of the box but to having recycled paper in there one day, he says.

Toad and Co. reduces packaging with LimeLoop

Similarly, apparel brand Toad and Co. also thought deeply about its packaging and wanted it to tell its brand story in a robust and rich way, says Steve McCann, marketing director. For example, many new or luxury brands, such as Apple Inc. will tell their brand stories within the packaging and will include a booklet highlighting the products’ features or other details about the brand for a luxury unboxing.

“You say, ‘I want this for my brand,’” McCann says. “Then you ask yourself, ‘Is this what my brand stands for? And you say ‘No, that is so much waste.’ And how do we get beyond that? How do we still have that story while being minimal and being responsible?”

And so, Toad and Co. went minimal, with no inked boxes, no attached hang tag and no booklet describing its brand. Instead, it gives shoppers the choice between recycled paper mailers and reusable LimeLoop bags.

About 12%-15% of Toad and Co.’s online shoppers select the LimeLoop package option, and 20% of those who chose LimeLoop as their fulfillment method choose it again, McCann says. These are healthy numbers, McCann says, especially when considering how many new customers Toad and Co. has, he says without revealing more.

“When brands have an option and it’s different and it’s addressing the issue, they love it and grab on to it,” McCann says about the LimeLoop bags.

Toad and Co. is No. 1623 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Next 1000.

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Alex Tomey, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer, Global Industrial Co.

Alex Tomey, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer for industrial and commercial products distributor Global Industrial Co., is applying his 20 years of merchandising expertise to help Global Industrial improve margin performance, accelerate new category expansion, and strengthen core and private brand product growth.

Prior to joining Global Industrial in 2021, Tomey applied his merchandising expertise at such companies as Petco, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Kohl’s, and Walmart.

DC360: What is driving B2B companies like Global Industrial Co. to expand online?

Tomey:  B2B customers expect a similar experience purchasing products online as they have in their personal life; everyone is challenged for time and the convenience of researching and buying products online greatly improves efficiencies. We continue to focus on improving the customer experience by elevating our content, functionality, and integration with our managed sales organization.

DC360: What are your biggest internal or and external barriers?

Tomey: The pandemic, the supply chain crisis and inflation has created a lot of disruption in the market place the last three years. It also inspired a lot of transformation and innovation. At Global Industrial, we re-branded our company, launched a new website, and re-vamped our ‘Go to Market’ strategy, focusing on elevating the customer experience.

DC360: What are the chief gains you’re realizing?

Tomey:  We have doubled down on our customer focus; fully integrating our product and marketing strategies, operational efficiencies, and customer service. We are confident this will position us to drive customer acquisition and growth over the long term.

DC360: What is the most valuable piece of advice you have on how to launch online B2B sales or increase them?

Tomey: Develop seamless customer touch points to drive efficiency and improve the overall experience.

Alex Tomey, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer of distributor Global Industrial Co., will speak during the session, “Make Sustainability A Differentiator for Your Company,” at the EnvisionB2B Conference & Exhibition in June in Chicago. 

Peter Lucas is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy.

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“We would never do that,” he says.

Instead, the online merchant of cleaning and household products has about four box sizes and two envelope sizes to appropriately fit each size order into the correct box. And for orders with a few products — the average order size on Grove.co is eight to 10 products — its warehouse workers “Tetris” or puzzle together the fulfillment box so all the products fit inside, Landesberg says.

Packing in the Grove warehouse

Stuart Landesberg, CEO and co-founder, Grove Collaborative

This packer position at the Grove warehouse is not entry level. It requires more training and comes with a promotion. Packers receive a week of hands-on training, then a month of guided supervision as they learn how to pack the boxes and their expected goals.

“The training process at Grove is longer than most ecommerce packer training programs because the nature of our product and packaging expectations requires a level of detail that isn’t always necessary in a traditional packing role,” Landesberg says. “Our team members understand the importance of optimizing products and packaging materials in such a way that does not contribute to a higher carbon footprint.”

2023 Ecommerce Fulfillment Report

Analysis of the latest trends in ecommerce fulfillment. Includes over 20 charts, expert analysis on top U.S. shipping carriers and how their finances impact retailers, and breakdowns of shipping, returns, and omnichannel offerings among retailers in the Top 1000

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Landesberg describes the role as a “pressure seat.” The employee receives the touts with the products picked for the order and the appropriately sized box. Then, they have to quickly fit it all in, as employees have a units per hour goal.

“In addition to specific quality and safety goals, packers at Grove have an incremental units per hour goal to meet based on how long they’ve been in the job function,” a Grove spokesperson says. “The quality goals focus on ensuring that packed items arrive to our customers safely and in good condition.”

Other warehouses might use a robot to perform this task. Grove is willing to pay a bit more to have this step of the fulfillment process done right to be a more sustainable merchant. Landesberg declined to share its warehouse employee wages.

“I haven’t seen anything robots can do as good as a human,” Landesberg says about this box packing step. Grove weekly tracks customer satisfaction and feedback as the primary success metrics for Grove packers.

A sustainable Grove

Grove launched in 2012 as ePantry, and in 2016 rebranded to Grove Collaborative, an online-only brand with sustainability as its core mission. About 13% of the products sold on Grove.co are its own brand. The remaining 87% are from other brands it sells, such as Mrs. Meyer’s, Method and Rooted Beauty. Today, Grove is publicly traded, a certified B. Corp., and sells a selection of its branded products at Walmart, Target and Amazon. Grove Collaborative generated $321.5 million in net revenue in 2022. This was down 16% year over year, the merchant reported, and it is operating at a loss.

Grove is plastic-neutral, meaning for every pound of plastic sold, it collects and recycles that same amount in nature through rePurpose Global. Its goal is to be plastic-free by 2025. And that means Grove Collaborative has routinely iterated on its product and fulfillment packaging.

Packaging: lighter, smaller and less

To achieve the lowest carbon footprint on a fulfillment box, it’s all about lower weight, smaller size and less package, Landesberg says.

Grove focuses on only selling products that are smaller in size — or changing them to fit this mission. For example, instead of selling a full-size mop, which is bulky to ship, it made its broom stick collapsible to fit into a much smaller box. That brings Landesberg to a tip for merchants striving to be more sustainable: Invest in multiple box sizes.

“The best solution is well-trained labor and enough box sizes that you can match products to appropriately,” he says.

At one point, Grove had 30 box sizes. Now, it has settled on its four boxes and two mailers, which can appropriately fit its all of its orders.

Fewer boxes per order

Another shipping practice that Landesberg claims Grove “would never do” is splitting up an order of eight to 10 products into eight to 10 shipments. The carbon footprint is much larger for multiple boxes instead of a slightly larger box that can hold a few more objects, he says.

While orders arriving in multiple boxes sometimes happens, especially for larger orders, Landesberg says split shipments are less than 5% of all of its orders. This is below the industry standard, in which 21% of orders from an online retailer arrived in more than one shipment, according to data from fulfillment vendor Narvar Inc. collected October-December 2021.

Because Grove launched as a vertically integrated online brand, it purposely designed its products to ship directly to consumers, not for a store shelf, Landesberg says. For example, it’s laundry detergent is sold in a 1-ounce concentrated glass bottle that shoppers can mix with water at home, unlike the large bottles sold in stores. Its candles are packaged in a box with a thinner glass, unlike the freestanding, thick-glass candles at stores.

These modifications to the product package allow Grove to ship orders to consumers in a way that weighs less, takes up less space and uses less interior packaging in the box.

And after the packages are snuggly fit in the box, Grove uses a recycled paper to pad the products during the shipping journey. In May 2019, Grove went through its supply chain and eliminated single-use plastic and switched to paper materials.

Grove.co’s paid members are its more frequent purchasers

These initiatives resonate with a certain cohort of shoppers who strive to live a sustainable lifestyle. Grove is No. 301 in the 2022 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000.

About half of Grove.co’s sales are from shoppers making one-time purchases priced 5-20% above the discount it gives consumers who sign up for a subscription to products.

The other half of Grove.co’s sales are from consumers who signed up to receive auto-replenishments of  products or paid $19.99 for an annual VIP program membership. Members receive seven free gifts a year, exclusive sales, early access to new products and free samples. Landesberg says “hundreds of thousands” of customers are paid members, but declined to share the exact number.

Nearly 50% of paying members renew memberships annually, Landesberg says.

Landesberg says he is pleased with this membership retention rate. He points to the value of the program, the strong brand and engaged community as reasons for this retention rate. For example, members can join its private Facebook group, which is “incredibly engaged,” Landesberg says.

The average order value for traditional shoppers compared with members or subscribers is about the same, Landesberg says. He did not reveal that figure. The frequency of purchasing, however, is much higher for members and subscribers, from six to 12 times per year. That compares with traditional shoppers, which is about four times per year.

Grove expands its retail presence

But even with such high engagement rates on its own site, Grove Collaborative knows many shoppers still do not recognize its brand.

To that end, since 2021, Grove has sold a selection of its products with national mass merchants including Target Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. In 2022, Grove expanded to sell its products in CVS Caremark Corp., Harris Teeter Supermarkets LLC, H-E-B Grocery Company, Meijer Inc. and Giant Eagle Inc. Today, Grove products are sold at thousands of retail locations, including at mass merchant Walmart Inc.

“To change the category, we need to play in the channels where the majority of people are buying these products,” Landesberg says.

But the goal, Landesberg says, is not to introduce them to Grove on Target and then get them to buy that product on Grove Collaborative.

“It’s my goal to get them to come back and get them to buy that product again,” Landesberg says.

“Economically, yes, we make more money when they buy their entire regimen from Grove,” he adds.

He knows the majority of shoppers don’t buy their household cleaning and personal care products directly from a brand’s website. They buy these products from a mass merchant. Grove declined to share what percent of its sales are from its direct-to-consumer site or from other merchants.

Kathy Kimple, executive director, digital strategy, at ecommerce consulting firm OSF Digital, says it’s interesting to see subscription-based companies expand into retail. Shoppers save on shipping and get the product immediately. Meanwhile, the brand gets more exposure.

“As access to their products grows, there will be less need for subscription,” Kimple says. “Depending on the company’s goal, lower subscriptions may be offset by brand awareness if retailers start to carry more Grove products.”

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These were some of the most interesting trends to watch from Shoptalk.

AI is everywhere

Artificial intelligence was the single most popular topic among presenters and panelists. Executives and speakers faced dozens of questions about how AI might change retail. 

Noelle Sadler, CMO, ThredUp

Executive vice president and chief digital and information officer at Lowe’s Seemantini Godbole pointed to the home improvement retailer’s app as an example of AI’s potential applications. The app can be used to measure square footage of a room and see how appliances will fit. It’s not “nice to have; it’s essential,” Godbole said. Lowe’s Cos. Inc. ranks No. 11 in the Top 1000.

Other retailers spoke about using artificial intelligence to make better recommendations to customers. For example, ThredUp chief marketing officer Noelle Sadler described how the resale company uses AI to suggest similar products to customers. Shein global head of strategy and corporate affairs Peter Pernot-Day told Digital Commerce 360 that the apparel retailer also uses AI to make recommendations to consumers. The company then uses information on customer preferences to create new collections for customers in just a few days.

Video and livestreaming have potential

Shopping through livestream video is still relatively unpopular in the U.S. market, but several retailers and marketplaces at Shoptalk described how that could change.

Ecommerce marketplace Verishop found that customers react strongly to videos. The marketplace uses automation to turn livestreams from creators into smaller evergreen clips that can live on product pages. Products with video reviews saw conversion rates improve more than 40%, co-founder and CEO Imran Khan said.

Fragrance company Nest takes a different approach. Live videos are a way to sell products like fragrances that consumers traditionally want to see in person, chief digital officer Andrea Moore said. Nest uses videos to establish its credibility in the fragrance world, answer consumer questions, host product premiers, and showcase exclusive offers, Moore said.

The secondhand market is growing

ThredUp’s Shoptalk presentation

Secondhand sales were also discussed throughout the conference by a number of retailers. ThredUp president Anthony Marino began a panel discussion of resale companies by saying that used clothing has gone from having “stigma to status.” ThredUp now works with 20 companies to manage their resale markets, including J. Crew (No. 87), Gap (No. 19), and Abercrombie and Fitch (No. 57). The clothing resale market is growing 16 times faster than the broader retail market, per ThredUp’s data. The company said more than half of consumers purchased secondhand clothing in the past year.

Reham Fagiri, co-founder and CEO of furniture resale marketplace AptDeco, told a similar story about used furniture. The furniture resale market is growing about three times as fast as total retail, Fagiri said.

Both ThredUp and AptDeco attributed the growth to customer expectations of convenience and sustainability. To work directly with retailers, ThredUp and AptDeco both emphasized that they can bring new consumers to brands that might not buy them at the original price points. AptDeco partnered with Williams-Sonoma Inc. (No. 22) to list returned or slightly damaged furniture, and in turn gives the retailer data about how to price used items.

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