From watches and jewelry to bags and clothing, second-hand luxury goods provide a lower threshold luxury consumption channel for people who are shy but aspire to famous brands, but the prevalence of problems such as fake sales, description discrepancies and after-sales make this new consumer market, which aims to be a trillion-dollar market, is growing wildly in an environment lacking in restraint.
“This LV old flower bag, 90% new, 3999 seconds! Come 3, 2, 1, on the link.” In the second-hand luxury live, such a tight sales pace, from clothing, bags to watches, jewelry, a second-hand luxury live can sell hundreds of luxury goods a day, the total monthly turnover can reach tens of millions of yuan (RMB, the same below).
However, among the complaints about online second-hand luxury goods transactions reported by many consumers, the highest percentage of complaints are about fake sales and discrepancies between color and description. The situation that the description of goods does not match with the actual situation and the goods are not right is also very common in the online second-hand luxury goods trading.
Fake goods can only be admitted to be unlucky
“There is no guarantee of the authenticity of second-hand luxury goods. I spent more than 3,000 yuan to buy a Dior shoulder bag and an Omega watch of more than 2,000 yuan, which turned out to be fakes,” said Liu Yi, a buyer from Chengdu, “I looked for the platform, but the customer service only stressed the absolute authenticity, but could not issue any identification report or statement, and did not support the return of goods, which means that consumers can only admit their own misfortune. “.
Liu Yi said that the platform itself can not issue a valid identification report of the goods, she wanted to send to the identification, the need for more than 1,000 yuan of inspection costs, and the seller does not necessarily recognize the identification results sent by the consumer himself. This means that once the goods are sold, the platform barely bears any after-sales responsibility.
“I bought a bag in the live room claimed to be 99% new, and found that the physical surface wrinkles are obvious, the interior is dirty, the leather surface has water stains, hardware oxidation is serious, not even 90% new.” In early March, Jiangxi buyer Yang Yuwei in the platform after requesting the sale of fruitless, can only launch a complaint.
But the difficulty of after-sales rights is far greater than imagined. Live broadcast no replay, Yang Yuwei no way to find evidence of physical and live description does not match, want to apply for a refund, the platform customer service to “do not support seven days no reason to return” as the reason for refusal. Yang Yuwei sent the goods back to the platform to sell again, the pricing given by the platform is less than half of her purchase price, but also charged 15% of the actual selling price as a commission, which makes the difference in her loss of buying and selling this bag is close to 1000 yuan.
The “China Second-hand Luxury Market Development Research Report (2021)” points out that the brand does not provide identification services, the lack of identification ability of ordinary consumers, and the gradual shift of trading venues to online, resulting in more channels for selling luxury goods fakes, lower costs, and more difficult for consumers to defend their rights.
“The problem of counterfeit goods and mismatched goods really exists in the second-hand luxury industry, and the quality of second-hand luxury goods circulating in the whole market is uneven, especially the risk of buying live is especially high”, said Zhang Mengxia, professor of University of International Business and Economics and director of China Luxury Research Center, “At present, domestic second-hand Some platforms do not do a good job in the identification and inspection process, which makes it easy to sell fake, misleading and false propaganda”.
Platform strong users have no bargaining power
In mainland China, C2C mode is the main transaction mode of second-hand luxury goods platform, that is, connecting second-hand luxury goods sellers and buyers, and the platform provides transaction services and draws a percentage. In the absence of unified standards and regulations, the platform usually decides the transaction rules by itself, and the users are in the weak side in the whole transaction.
According to the general consignment process, the platform will identify and evaluate the goods after receiving them, give a suggested price, and sell them on the shelves after confirmation by the seller. After the goods are sold, the platform will be in accordance with the final transaction price of 10% to 20% of the commission service fee, the remaining income into the seller’s account.
However, in the actual transaction process, sellers as users have little bargaining power and are forced to bear the part of the price that the platform forces to cut for promotional purposes. During the period of consignment of goods, the platform gradually intensified the promotion mechanism, so that the longer the goods are on the shelves, the greater the automatic price depreciation. With the platform always on the strong side, the actual price charged by the seller is often far less than expected.
In the identification and valuation link, the platform and its own appraiser directly determine whether the goods can be on the shelves, pricing how much. A number of users have complained that the platform refused to compensate for damaged or lost consignment goods, leaving the user to bear the loss. Even for goods that are agreed to be put on the shelves for consignment, the pricing is generally low, and it is more common for the price of goods to dive due to after-sales problems with one click resale.
“As there is no unified identification standard for domestic second-hand luxury goods, the level of identification varies from platform to platform, which will naturally lay the hidden danger of fake goods and goods not matching the board”, said Wang Chen, a senior luxury appraiser who has been in the business for nearly 10 years, “On the one hand, the domestic industry lacks a unified identification standard, and the platform On the one hand, the domestic industry lacks unified appraisal standard, and the platform may not be able to accurately identify the authenticity of goods; on the other hand, the platform also has the situation that the rating of goods is not common and standardized. On the other hand, the platform also has the situation that the rating of second-hand luxury goods is not common and standardized, which leads to the unilateral decision of the platform and the lack of transparency for both buyers and sellers and market circulation, and the situation that the pricing is too high or too low.
Independent rating is not credible
Wang Chen introduced that in Japan, where the second-hand luxury goods market is mature, for example, the level of second-hand luxury goods is divided into S grade (nearly new), A grade (slight signs of use), B grade (normal signs of use) and C grade (heavy signs of use or missing accessories), and each product needs to be strictly graded according to the grading standard, and the graded goods have recognition and circulation in the market.
In China, some platforms are graded according to brand new, 95 new, 9 new, 8 new, some even 0 subdivided to 99 new, 98 new, 97 new, but at present, each platform’s independent rating has no industry recognition, neither rating guarantee nor circulation reference, this grading identification has no differentiation and reference value at all.
“A healthy second-hand luxury goods e-commerce platform should first have the ability and means to identify the authenticity of goods, to ensure that the circulation of second-hand luxury goods is genuine”, said Zhang Mengxia, “taking into account the current identification technology and means more and more complex, the platform in order to ensure fair transactions, at least need to provide return and exchange In order to ensure the fairness of the transaction, the platform should at least provide return and exchange service to protect the rights of consumers”.
Despite the chaos, the second-hand luxury goods market in mainland China is still an emerging market with great potential.
In the last decade, the stock of luxury goods in China is about 4 trillion yuan, and the size of second-hand market only accounts for 5%. In contrast, the consumption of second-hand luxury goods in developed countries can reach 20% or even 30% of the consumption of luxury goods. 2020, China’s personal luxury goods market in the world accounted for 20%, compared to the global market size of about 21 billion euros of second-hand luxury goods, China’s market share is only 10%, compared with Europe and the United States a large gap.
There is still plenty of room for the development of the second-hand luxury goods market in mainland China. However, in the long run, this expanding industry is in urgent need of a set of perfect and professional industry standards to regulate its development.
“The establishment of a unified industry standard is the key to promote the standardized development of the second-hand luxury goods market in mainland China,” said Chang Dalei, secretary-general of the China Used Goods Association, which is drafting a document on “basic information description and requirements for online trading of used goods”. The Association hopes to solve the problems of inaccurate information of goods, inaccurate description of goods, misleading consumption and difficult to maintain rights after sale.
The urgent need to strengthen the industry regulation
On the other hand, the hot market of second-hand luxury goods has also driven the development of the appraisal training industry. The formal professional appraiser needs training and certificate, and there are clear regulations on job content, skill requirements, knowledge level and appraisal. Wang Chen said that many of the market claims that three to seven days off the training course, can only teach some general common identification methods, students can only learn the skin, the appraiser’s own level is mixed.
In the industry before the arrival of norms, the market still continues to “fever”. Offline, as of the end of 2019, there are about 4,200 second-hand luxury stores above the national scale, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%; online, many fashion or e-commerce platforms have joined the track, with individual platform financing ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the annual turnover of several platforms approaching 1 billion yuan, attracting more and more new users to become second-hand luxury goods consumers.
“The stock of second-hand luxury goods in mainland China is large and the circulation rate is low, and it is foreseeable that the share of the second-hand market will continue to expand”, said Zhang Mengxia, “The urgent task now is to strengthen the regulation and industry standardization, solve the problems and risks in the development of this emerging industry, and promote the benign development of the industry “.
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