Flaunt Top Fashion Labels without Burning a Hole in Your Pocket – Buy Quality Second Hand Clothes Online

• It is much more affordable and gives value for money.
• It is extremely environment friendly, drives sustainability and extends the usable lifecycle of an apparel.
• It is no longer taboo to buy and wear second hand clothes.
• Thrifting allows you to wear branded fashion without paying a high price for it.

• Q. Tell us about yourself and your background.
• I am born and brought up in Mumbai. I went to Cathedral School and Sydenham College, doing my masters from JBIMS. I worked with HSBC for a few months after that and then joined the family textile export business, the Kishco Group. I was there for 21 years from 1997 to 2018 and that business took me down sustainability. Within the textile industry I began working with sustainability, recycling and upcycling.

• Q. What led you to create Kiabza and how did you go about it?
• Globally there is a lot of space for pre-owned fashion and we thought of bringing a similar business in India. Thrift shopping and previously owned fashion is huge overseas and we wanted to see if it can work here. In 2018 we did research on the Indian market and in 2019 there was a soft launch.
  
  Globally there is a huge involvement in recycling, it is a very exciting space. Thrifting is seen as a cool thing. What we found here was that buying used clothes is seen as something of a taboo among the older generation. But we saw a shift happening and there is a move towards sustainability, especially among the younger generation.

• Q. How receptive to thrift shopping for clothes is the Indian market?
• It is super receptive. Our core user base is the 18 to 30 year old, the Instagram generation. They constantly want to look good, they know about the power of sustainability, they do all their shopping online, they aren’t mall shoppers. This generation does not believe in fast fashion. Thrift shopping for branded clothing is a very global thing and this generation is very aware of what’s happening. The older generation, my generation, followed a few international trends and stars like maybe Michael Jackson. This generation knows about all the celebs, what each of them stand for and they follow global trends.
  
  We were also very surprised at how much interest thrifting generated. The 18 to 30 year old wants to always look good, they may not have a lot of money to spend yet want to wear branded clothes. Thrifting means at affordable prices they get value products and that is a great draw for people who cannot afford branded fashion at retail prices. Thrifting is now a cult, it is cool.

• Q. Why is a move towards sustainability so important for the fashion industry?
• The fashion industry has been ignoring sustainability for a long time. There is a lot of wastage of natural resources, especially water. Even so, for a long time the industry did not do anything. The game changer happened in 2000 when along came fast fashion, where instead of having four seasons a year, someone decided let’s have 24 seasons where new clothing lines are coming out all through the year. It was then that waste in the fashion industry went up to an all time high and global brands deemed that we need to do something about it.
  
  Sustainability is a very broad definition. Is it about using resources responsibly or misusing them? It even applies to a clean working environment for workers. How do we improve things? One solution is by encouraging pre-owned branded fashion.
  
  There is so much wastage - 30 per cent of what is made never gets sold, and of the 70 per cent that does find buyers, 50 to 60 per cent are barely used. Instead of it filling landfills, let’s do something with it - reuse, recycle, upcycle, recycle the fibre yarn.

• Q. What are your own interests and how did the pandemic affect the business?
• We have been working from home but very diligently. For the first few months into the lockdown we were completely shut, then we had the warehouse open but it was still WFH. I have a super team that looks into the day to day operations. I am involved more in the strategic, PR, firefighting side and don’t get involved in the micro side of the business.
  
  I play golf every weekend; I played golf at a national level, representing India in junior men's golf at one time. I love travelling and have been to over 60 countries, food is a passion, I enjoy music, I run three days a week.

Where Can You Find Them?

• Q. How do you ensure quality and hygiene?
• The entire process is automated and the only manual intervention is for checking. The BCIL software runs through the product at the time of checking it. The product comes in and gets a SKU, and is listed according to a category. There are 5 options to show the condition of the product - new with tag, without tag, nearly new, worn a few times and teeny weeny imperfection. When a product is over-used it goes to an NGO partner.

• Q. What are you trying to achieve?
• Kiabza is a for profit company, but sustainability has been integrated into it. We want to give fashion new life, give people value for money, give them affordable branded fashion. That it supports sustainability and helps in reusing things that would otherwise land up in a landfill is an added advantage. It’s about making money while helping people look good, feel good, and as a plus it is contributing to sustainability. What doesn’t sell goes to three NGOs that we have partnered with.
  
  When the product comes in it is checked for fabric, defect, embellishments, if the product has lost shape, colour, if it has holes. If it does not meet the checklist then it gets rejected. After inspection it either goes for a wet wash or a dry clean.

• Q. What are the biggest challenges of dealing with previously owned clothes?
• There are 3 factors that are identified during an examination of the clothes - quality, hygiene and authenticity. When people don’t know much about the concept of pre-owned fashion, they will test quality.
  
  Authenticity. In India where there is a first, second and third copy being created, people don’t want to get ripped off. We therefore have experts from the industry to check everything that comes in, and we have a checklist on authenticity to ensure that the products are authentic.
  
  To maintain hygiene, everything is sent for either a wet wash or for dry clean. Our model is to bring the clothes into the warehouse instead of a C2C model that thrifting often has.