Women’s Preloved Clothes

Hello and welcome to our brand new Buildabundle Blog! We’ll be writing about anything and everything relating to preloved kids clothes, environmental issues and general parenting, and we really hope you enjoy reading it.

The first blog deals with PRELOVED WOMEN’S CLOTHES! Now this is something we get asked over and over again – so many of our customers have said to us that they wish there was a Buildabundle for women’s clothes, and have asked whether we would consider opening up a womenswear side. The answer at the moment is unfortunately not – we’re so busy with the children’s clothes that we’re already working at full capacity in terms of the space in our commercial premises, and having enough hours in the day! (Although we do stock a small selection of preloved/second-hand women’s maternity clothes, which we love doing because we know how hard it can be to find maternity clothes that don’t cost a fortune, for something you’ll wear for a short space of time when pregnant! ?)

However its clear to us that there is a demand for somewhere to buy and sell good quality second-hand womenswear. Second-hand shopping is much better for the environment than always buying brand new, along with the bargain prices and the fact that it can often be a lot more fun browsing unique one-offs which are different to the items in the shops. So we set about looking for any women’s websites doing similar to what we do with children’s clothes here at Buildabundle. We’re happy to report that we’ve found a few fab options, and we intend to keep updating and adding to this blog – so if you find any good second-hand women’s clothes websites, please do let us know! (We haven’t been paid or asked to feature any of these sites, they’re just ones that we have found from our own searches, have tried out and been impressed with).

CINDERS CLOTHING AGENCY – www.cindersclothing.co.uk

Cinders are based in the same town as Buildabundle (Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria). They have a bricks-and-mortar shop in our town centre which sadly had to temporarily close in lockdown like so many other retailers (they have since reopened as of April 2021) – but not to be deterred, they took the opportunity to diversify into an online shop too, which I think is to be respected so much. They didn’t let such a difficult time for retailers stop them, they used it to branch out! You can browse and buy online and they will post your orders all across the UK, or you can collect if you’re local. They sell a selection of preloved kids clothes but it’s mainly womenswear, and they add new stock regularly. Items are a mix of high-street and designer, with prices ranging from £5-100+ so there really is something for everyone.

We’ve spotted some amazing gems on there including Mulberry handbags and purses, designer scarves, brand new shoes, leather jackets and coats. I’ve personally ordered a few times and loved everything I’ve bought, the items are always in great condition and they get some really lovely pieces in. The website gets a little addictive, checking to see what they’ll add next, as you just never know! You can also sell items through them – bring in your items to them to sell, they’ll do the hard work of selling them and you’ll get 50% of the sale price, which is really good. Highly recommended!

SWOPPED – www.swopped.co.uk

This is a genius idea – you can send in your unwanted women’s clothes to swap for credits, which you can then spend on different clothes on the Swopped website. They’ve got a fantastic wide selection to choose from.

You have to pay a monthly subscription fee to swap items, which varies depending on how many items you want to swap – £6.50 to swap 1 item a month, £17.99 for 5 items or £29.99 for 10 items. When you consider that buying just 1 brand new item a month can cost a lot more than this, I think that’s really good value, and the possibilities to constantly swap and refresh your wardrobe are endless. When you get bored of something, just swap it again!

(If you don’t have anything to swap, it looks like you can buy credits to use on the website, so you can still shop there even without swapping anything – but swapping is the really fun part!)

I tried out the £29.99 option, and sent in 10 items of my own clothes to see how it worked. I was so impressed that my items were sorted and swap credits issued within 48 hours – that’s much quicker than we process items ourselves at Buildabundle! I got 160 credits which was enough to get me 13 swapped items – I chose a mixture of jeans, summer and winter dresses and jumpsuits, tops and skirts. I chose high street brands because that’s what I wanted, but I could have used my credits to buy less items from higher-end brands if I had wanted to, they have a good mixture of all brands on the website.

There was a slight delay in my parcel being sent out and it did take a couple of weeks to arrive, but Swopped were really quick to reply to my email enquiring about when it would arrive, their customer service is great. When my order arrived I was really impressed, the clothes were lovely and in great condition, one was even brand new with tags. I loved most of the clothes – a few items didn’t fit right, which you expect with womenswear, as we’re all different shapes and shops can vary so much with how their items fit – but you can easily return any items that aren’t right, and swap them again for something else. I’m definitely going to keep up my subscription, and am excited to see what I can swap next!

RE-FASHION – www.re-fashion.co.uk

On the Re-fashion website you can browse and buy online from a wide selection of women’s clothes. I placed an order a couple of months ago for 4 items which all arrived really quickly and were in lovely condition. Prices were pretty reasonable too. It was an easy hassle-free shopping experience, and definitely somewhere I will buy from again.

I haven’t personally investigated the option to send in your own clothes – currently it looks to me like they don’t pay for items, but you can donate clothes to them for free. I was a little unsure about this personally as they aren’t a registered charity, however their website says they support the Rieves foundation which is a charity supporting sustainable fashion. Between 20-60% of an item’s sale price goes to this charity. Obviously this means the rest will be paying for the business’s running costs, and presumably they will be making a small profit too, which I do think they could be slightly clearer about on their website – given that traditionally second-hand shops have been charity-based in the past, I do feel that us online second-hand businesses need to make it clear if we are a charity or a profit-making business to avoid confusion for customers. HOWEVER there’s no doubt that they are doing a fantastic thing in making sustainable preloved fashion easier to access, and that in itself is a good enough reason to donate anything you no longer want or need.

PRELOVED PROJECT – www.facebook.com/PrelovedProject.6

This is a lovely business based in Letchworth – currently they don’t have a website and are based in a shop premises, however they regularly post some gorgeous items to their Facebook page and they have told me they can post items out if people wish, so it’s well worth giving them a follow and seeing what they add, even if you aren’t local!

OTHER OPTIONS

Of course there are many other options to buy preloved women’s clothes both online and in person such as charity shops, social media selling pages, Depop, Ebay, Vinted etc. For this article we’ve just focused on sites where you can buy a bundle for one postage charge, with an easy quick way to browse and buy online (similar to our own website). I personally find sites like Ebay can work out expensive, since you often only want one item from each seller and sometimes the postage cost can work out as much as the item itself, but it can be good if you’re looking for something specific.

All of these websites are making it easier and more convenient to buy second-hand items, which is amazing because that is what will encourage more people to do it. In turn, this will have a positive impact on the environment and reduce the pollution and damage caused by fast fashion. We love it! 😀

We’re always on the lookout for other women’s clothes websites to update this blog with, so if you know of any please do let us know by emailing us at info@buildabundle.co.uk!