Entrepreneurship, Female

SECONDHAND ITEMS YES BUT NOT SECONDHAND

04/09/2022

When children grow up and closets are filled with their toys fill if certain items are no longer needed except to accumulate dust or stylish handbags and fashion accessories no longer attract our attention, the result is only one: turning into sellers for these items that are no longer needed.

There are nearly twenty-three million Italians who have chosen this form of circular economy and 66% of those who have bought or looked to used goods as their first channel of reference, showing, especially for sales, that they consider this mode as a smart way to make space, give value to objects and earn money. All under the banner of sustainability, which remains the first reference value of the second-hand economy (54 percent). The "second hand economy" in Italy has generated an economic value of twenty-four billion euros, equal to 1.4% of the national GDP.

The second hand economy enters to all intents and purposes among the consumption habits of Italians, thanks also to the propulsive role of digital, which has evolved through the introduction of increasingly integrated services that allow buying and selling to be managed totally from smartphones, without moving from home. The used goods we know today are no longer a by-product of the new, but a smart and astute choice of those who want to free up space in their homes and give new life to objects, and those who want to buy something unique that they might not find elsewhere. Over the years, second-hand has become a parallel market, endowed with charm, fashion, uniqueness and convenience, so much so that in Anglo-Saxon countries they even celebrate a national day dedicated to the second hand, and in Sweden the first mall dedicated to second-hand goods was born.

To understand how the concept of "used goods" has transformed over time, we must first remember how consumption worked in the past. Let‘s jump back in time and go back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. We are in a decisive historical period: it is in these years that stores make their first appearance, thus moving from artisan workshops to department stores specializing in the sale of ready-made clothes. Think for example of the birth of the famous "La Rinascente" in 1918, or in 1928 "Upim" and of "Standa" in 1931. This was undoubtedly a great change for man, for his way of buying and conceiving material goods, a metamorphosis that manifested itself especially in the years of the economic boom, that is, between 1959 and 1963. Within a very short time, Italy became one of the 10 most industrialized countries in the world, moving away from the primacy of agriculture, where there was single-income and values such as self-consumption, spirit of sacrifice and, above all, ethics of saving were still very strong. It was with this enormous turnaround that Italians first discovered prosperity, after experiencing the disasters of the war and the poverty of the following years. Refrigerators and washing machines, radios and televisions, symbols of a modernization that marked new habits of consumption, made their entrance into homes. Habits also influenced by the great "American dream," that is, to own at all costs the latest model of whatever was on the market.  It is the age of consumerism, dominated by mass media and pounding advertising that invades the community and appropriates everything public. Who would have wanted a used item anymore, when there were now so many new, perfect and tempting things, already ready to become waste with the arrival of the next model?

Consumerism, then, has generated a violent divide between the new and the used, pushing the latter toward the concept of poverty: one buys used because one cannot afford the new. This system has been lodged in the consciousness and unconscious of individuals for several years, shaping their personalities, desires and orientations, going so far as to make them believe that anyone who buys used was an unaffordable person belonging to a lower cultural class. A conception of used goods that today seems obsolete and far removed from reality.

What has changed this, then? Further social change due to a few phenomena in particular:

  1. the arrival of a new critical economic scenario that has led people to rationalize their consumption;
  2. the evolution of consumers themselves due to the advent of the Internet and smartphones, thus reaching the maximum availability of information;
  3. the realization that such massive consumption is no longer environmentally sustainable;
  4. the new space gained by second-hand goods: from street markets to stores as beautiful, clean and well-organized as traditional ones;
  5. the quality and cleanliness of the products on display: the dirty items of junk shops are just a distant memory that is no longer part of modern culture. Today, used goods are offered for sale only in perfect condition, already washed and cleaned (they are often much cleaner than new everyday items).
So here is where second-hand evolves, is retrained, lives a revolution that takes it from being a symbol of poverty to being a winning philosophy, the best to optimize consumption, to have something cool without sacrificing quality, to avoid the waste that today is seriously endangering the health of the planet. Awareness of all this has changed the way we see and experience second-hand goods, marking the beginning of a new cultural evolution of which we are all a part.
The Pandemic from Covid-19 has further increased. Projected growth over the next few years exceeds 15 percent annually. No longer a niche market, but one involving growing layers of people, many of them young. The second-hand trade can take place in fixed sese (store), itinerant (stall) or online, but also with a combination of solutions. Rendered on an occasional or stable basis, the activity must be framed both from a tax and a legal point of view. 
Doxa‘s statistical analysis looked at the most popular categories and items in second hand buying and selling and showed i a steady growth in the volume of buying and selling of Second Hand Motors (11.5 billion), followed by personal and home care goods (5.7 billion) and the electronics sector (4.1 billion) while sporting goods and hobbies (2.6 billion), after the boom of 2020 returns to pre-pandemic levels due to the return to normalcy and the disappearance of specific needs.

The second hand confirms its third place among the most popular sustainable behaviors of Italians (52 percent), preceded again by separate waste collection (94 percent) and the purchase of LED light bulbs (71 percent).

On the podium of reference values associated with the second-hand world we find:
  1. it is a sustainable choice (54%);
  2. it allows objects to be given a second life (50%);
  3. it is a smart way to do circular economy (48%).
In conclusion, given the existence of numerous little used but great quality items acquired in past years and given the current trend, thinking about a business that knows how to focus on the right mix of "costs and benefits" for both the consumer and the entrepreneur may be worthy of attention. Our editorial staff remains available to provide, free of charge, any information through our qualified staff