More used garments are being thrown out. We buy more fast apparel that goes out of style soon. During the pandemic, total clothing sales decreased, while e-commerce apparel sales climbed substantially. We had to make room for the new items, so we cleaned out our closets and flooded several organizations with donations.
Your donated clothes may end up being repurposed into industrial rags, carpet padding, or house insulation.
It happens that shopkeepers search through bales of clothes to find bargains in Ghana, Uganda, Malaysia, and other nations. According to Rest of the World, some e-commerce returns are shipped overseas. Every now and again, a clever overseas vendor will sell a high-quality item to a US customer via Etsy or eBay.
E-commerce is a catalyst. As of 2020, roughly half of all garment purchases will be made online. In 2013, e-commerce apparel sales increased 25% to $181 billion.
Online buyers prefer to buy more clothes than they need. More over half of customers said they bought numerous sizes of the same item to return what doesn’t fit in 2021. Some companies even let consumers retain unwanted clothes, giving them more to donate or toss away.
According to GlobalData retail researcher Neil Saunders, e-commerce looks to generate greater clothing purchases. Online shopping exposes consumers to more brands than traditional shopping and allows them to shop at any time of day.
“More shopping opportunities lead to more impulse buying,” Saunders says of clothing.