Fashion for Good: The Thrift+ Sustainable Fashion Strategy

Protecting the planet is a growing concern across the world today and many industries are stepping up to demonstrate how they’re taking it seriously, including the fashion industry. Environmental responsibility can come in many forms such as avoiding producing and disposing of plastic, reusing existing products and materials as much as possible and favouring renewable energy. Rising carbon emissions is a major contributor to climate change but retailers can reduce their footprint by shortening production processes, sourcing materials and products locally, and cutting down on excessive transportation. At Shipster, we care about protecting the environment and love that our software is able to support companies dedicated to being eco-friendly.

A great example of this is our client Thrift+.

Thrift+ started as a way to make the charity shop experience as accessible and convenient as online fast fashion purchases, and describe themselves as “a clothing marketplace on a mission to make it easy to shop and re-sell second-hand”. Order a donation bag which can be returned for free and earn store credit for every donated item that sells. Use this store credit or your own money to purchase high-quality second hand clothes from their extensive online collection. Every item that sells raises money for a charity chosen by the donator, and so far the Thrift+ community has raised around £700,000 for some excellent causes. Despite being a relatively young company only founded in 2017, they have grown exponentially and now use Shipster to ship thousands of orders every month. 

Buying clothes second hand is eco-friendly because it creates a circular economy for fashion where clothes that are wearable but no longer wanted are not thrown away. 73% of clothes are incinerated or sent to landfill after only one owner. Extending an item of clothing’s life reduces the CO2 emissions and environmental pollution caused by generating new clothes, and helps ease the currently excessive global waste. As well as being more sustainable, recycled clothes are generally more ethical. It’s a way of buying clothes cheaply without being complicit in the inhumane treatment of many fast fashion workers who are often underpaid and exploited.

Excitingly, the sale of used clothes is predicted to soon overtake new clothes sales. This is partly due to a shift in consumer concern for the ethical effects of their purchases and the significant destigmatising of wearing second-hand clothes. We have companies like Thrift+ to thank for that.

Here are some ways Thrift+ use Shipster to manage their operations:

- Thrift+’s Shipster set up is generally very straightforward. They only ship two parcel types: either a bag for donations, or a standard-sized box filled with purchased clothes. Their Shipster is programmed to recognise whether the order being processed is a donation bag or a box and ensure it is sent on the appropriate service. It’s a simple but effective process.

- They have decided to only integrate with one courier which makes their Shipster support subscription very cost-effective. Many of our clients require multiple courier integrations for their larger variety of product types and international shipments. Thrift+ on the other hand only ship two order types and generally do not ship internationally. They have streamlined their courier integrations to reflect this simplicity.

- Thrift+ make full use of Shipster’s bulk despatch functionality to process large volumes of similar orders with one click of a button. This allows them to print a large volume of labels in a short space of time, which is especially helpful when they have a sudden influx of orders.

- They use Shipster to set standard weight values for their donation bags as they all weigh the same. This saves them time that would have been spent inputting this data as part of the despatch process and ensures the correct weight is always being sent to the courier.

- Shipster has generally helped facilitate Thrift+’s growth by automating their label creation process which enables them to ship a large volume of clothes and donation bags. We are subsequently supporting them on their mission to make the fashion industry more sustainable.

Here’s what a Thrift+ warehouse staff member had to say about their experience of using Shipster:

“I find Shipster software helpful. The support team is very friendly and have taught me how to fix a lot of problems myself. They are a small company so most of the time you know who on support you are going to speak to and they always know who we are too.”

Shipster is great for generally assisting your company in becoming more eco-friendly. For example, instead of printing customs documents, Shipster can be used to send them electronically where paperless trading is available which saves paper. Also, the software is designed to reduce the potential for human error which may have otherwise resulted in parcels being returned. This reduces the CO2 which would have been unnecessarily created by this failed shipping.