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Author: kirsten

myTOT 9 Steps: How to create a successful brand

Posted on November 1, 2021April 10, 2022 by kirsten
myTOT 9 Steps: How to create a successful brand

It’s never been easier to turn your unwanted items into a bit of extra spending money. All over the world, every single day, people are taking advantage of the technologies available to them to make this idea a profitable reality. All you need is a camera, an internet connection and a little bit of spare time and you can make some space in your closet while bringing in some cash for a rainy day. 

The myTOT app was created to be a parent-powered marketplace that also addresses the need to make fashion more sustainable. The aim is to give mums and dads an easily accessible platform to offload unwanted items or find bits and pieces at a discounted price to save money. 

Since its introduction to the world of online second hand clothing, many people have gotten involved in the myTOT community and are having some success on the platform. You might want to just sell a couple of things but if you want to make your store more successful, what can you do? How do you target your audience? What other steps are there to raise your profile and attract potential customers?

We’ve put together nine easy steps to follow in order to help build a successful brand on myTOT, so read on to find out more. 

1. Understand Your Target Audience

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling; it’s always helpful to have a clear image of who exactly you are selling to. 

Have you ever talked about something you’re thinking of buying with a friend over coffee, then later that day, you see a commercial for the exact product you were talking about in your newsfeed? Whenever this happens, we’re convinced that our phones are listening to us, but it’s not exactly the case. 

What’s happening here is that your email, social media and everyday purchase history are all talking to each other. They share pieces of information over time, and an image of you is sort of formed. Your phone isn’t listening to you; it’s just that all of the things you’re doing in your life are indicating that you would probably be looking for this certain product right now, so it’s advertised to you. 

Now, what can we learn from this? It’s really important to take the time to get to know who your potential customers are. It can be incredibly worthwhile to take the time to look at things like their age, location, gender, interests and hobbies. It can also be helpful to look at what kind of trends they are into, what’s their preferred social media and which topics they’re interested in. 

The more you know about the person you are looking to gain as a customer, the better you will understand exactly how to communicate with them. A good place to start is locally. You know your community better than anyone else. 

2. Create a Brand Personality & Tone of Voice

There’s already so much being sold on the internet that when it comes to establishing yourself as an online seller, it’s integral that you figure out what sets you apart from all the others. You need to decide exactly how you want to come across to potential customers. 

Think about what your store would be like if it were a person. You need to establish what is important to you. If your store were a person, who would it hang out with? This is a great question to ask because these metaphorical friends of your store are precisely the kind of customers you are looking to target. 

The answers to the above questions will help you to figure out the personality of your brand, then you just need to figure out your brand’s tone of voice. This might sound like a bit of a technical marketing term, but it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. 

The tone of voice refers to how your brand comes across to customers. It’s all about the type of language used; is it casual, formal, informative, friendly, funny? Once you know how you want your brand to sound, it will become super easy to write product descriptions, posts and blogs that all sound like they have come from the same place. 

3.Choose a Business Name

For many online business owners, this can be the hardest part of the whole journey, and that’s completely understandable. Everybody wants to find the perfect name that sums up exactly what their store or brand represents. 

It might take you a while to find the right inspiration, but once you have narrowed down some ideas, you can do a couple of things first to make sure it’s the right name for your brand. 

First, as soon as you have chosen a potential name, you should do a thorough google search of it to see if it already exists somewhere. The last thing you want as you’re beginning to build your store is to suddenly realise you’re competing with a similar name. Don’t just put your name in; alter the spelling too, see if there’s anything similar out there at all. 

Also, use your friends and family as sounding boards. Ask them what they think of the name you’ve come up with. Find out what instantly springs to mind when they hear it. Most importantly, make sure it’s a name you do love and identify with. 

4. Design Your Logo

Logos are incredibly important for any business, big or small. They are the image that instantly becomes associated with your brand, a visual calling card that easily represents your name and what you’re all about. 

Designing a logo can be a really fun part of the process of creating a successful online store if you happen to be artistically inclined, but for the rest of us, we wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start. 

Thankfully we live in an interconnected age where finding help or an expert has never been easier. 

There are many free programs online that you can download and use to create logos. There are also apps and websites dedicated to connecting individuals with freelance artists who can do the design work for you at a reasonable price. 

5. Set a Consistent Picture Style

In the world of business, consistency is key. It’s important to try to maintain a uniform look across your whole store, and this includes how you photograph your items. It’s a good idea to decide the way you would like to display your inventory and stick to it. 

When it comes to photographing items to sell, it’s great to make sure you do it in a well-lit space. Make sure your images look as closely as they can to the item in real life. Including a few different angles of some things can also be helpful for potential customers. 

For example, if you are selling a baby’s romper, photograph it from the front and back. If it has certain details like embellishments on buttons or pockets, it might be a good idea to take some close up photos of them.

It’s completely up to you how you set up and style your photos, but if you set a consistent picture style, you will make sure your items are easy to understand, and you will also set an easy to follow routine for setting up new things in your store. 

6. Apply Your Branding Across Your Shop

Even though you are setting up an independent online store, branding is still important. Using your branding across your whole store will set you apart from other sellers. 

Not everyone who shops online has a great memory or is able to pull up a web page they were on last week in the blink of an eye. Most of us have had moments in the past where we’ve looked at an item and thought, ‘I don’t have time to buy it now; I’ll get it later.’ Then when later comes, we can’t for the life of us remember the name of the seller in the online store or what specific combination of search words we put in to find the item. 

Using your personal branding help’s customers to find you and can also help to create brand loyalty. If they have a great shopping experience with you, chances are, when they see your brand in the future, they will know it’s one they can trust. 

You can apply your brand in many places on the myTOT site, and if you want to, you can even add it as a watermark to your images before uploading them. This means that when customers are browsing images, they know items are from your store without even having to read the product description. 

7. Promote Yourself Across Channels

In the old days, word of mouth was one of the most important marketing elements to business success, and this might surprise you, but in the digital world, it’s still important; it’s just changed a little. 

Without even realising it, we all have access to many different networks. Through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and TikTok, we have more reach than we ever thought possible. 

This can be very important for helping you to gain some traction. You can use social media to connect with people who are the perfect potential customers for your store. You can use these tools to not only get yourself out there but to also develop a community and learn from other like-minded sellers. 

8. Write for myTOT

The myTOT vision isn’t just about buying and selling clothing and other items; it’s also about building a community of like-minded people going through similar experiences. We all know that the world of parenting is exciting, rewarding and giving, but it can also at times be confusing and leave us feeling like we have no idea what we are doing. 

This is where you can share your wisdom to pay it forward. Do you remember when you discovered a hack or piece of knowledge that literally changed your life as a parent? Do you also remember thinking how great it would have been if someone had told you this before? Well, now you can. 

The myTOT blog is all about sharing tips, hints, hacks and thoughts to the myTOT community. Putting some of your experiences into a helpful blog post can also help get people interested in your store and what else you have to offer. 

If you’re interested in writing for myTOT, drop us a line today. 

9. Request a Feature in our Newsletter

If you have an unbelievable hot tip or would like to share some of your experiences of selling online with myTOT, we’d love to hear from you. 

We believe in the power of community, and sharing is definitely caring. If you’ve managed to take your online store from a few pieces to something that brings in a nice chunk of extra cash each month, people would love to hear about what you discovered along the way. 

Together we can learn from each other, help each other to save and earn, and also limit the environmental impacts of fashion. 

Conclusion

You don’t have to have a business degree to be good at selling online. The world of online marketplaces thrives on communities, and that’s exactly what’s at the core of myTOT. The people buying and selling through the myTOT marketplace are just like you. They’re like-minded people who want to reduce the amount of clothing that ends up in landfills, or save money while still having some great outfit choices for their little ones. 

Hopefully, the tips above will help you get on your way in your myTOT journey. We can’t wait to see how you go!

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What can we do to stop fast fashion?

Posted on October 1, 2021April 10, 2022 by kirsten
What can we do to stop fast fashion?

Everything is fast nowadays. We can get places really fast, order food, download movies; we can even turn on our lights with a simple voice command, much quicker than actually walking to the light switch. It’s truly an interesting time to be alive. 

When it comes to clothing, things have never been faster. Trends and fashion cycles are running at break-neck speeds. Outfits have never been cheaper and more accessible. In a few clumsy clicks of your phone, you can have a new ensemble delivered to your doorstep tomorrow for an event this weekend, and it’s incredibly likely you got some form of a discount on it. But what is the true cost of all this convenience? 

Yes, we’re living in a time when everything is fast and convenient, but the environment is also in peril, so we need to ask ourselves what impact does this fast fashion have? What exactly is it? Why is it so bad? What can we do better? 

Read on to find out all this and more.

What is Fast Fashion?

It might be a new term for you, but you are definitely familiar with fast fashion. You’ve bought it, you’ve worn it, you’ve swapped and thrifted it. Fast fashion is clothing that isn’t very expensive to make, and it’s produced on a massive scale. 

Without naming particular brands, our high streets and shopping centres are filled with fast fashion. In the regular cycle of fashion, ideas and concepts normally start on the runway in the form of couture, then over time, this is passed down through fast fashion to us regular people. Here’s Meryl Streep explaining that process in ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’

The fast-fashion model makes sense if you are a business trying to make a profit. You produce things as quickly as possible for as little as possible, then add a markup to the end customer and ‘BOOM’ money. 

It’s also not really necessary in the fast fashion model to make sure clothing has a long life; it just needs to last a little while because if it rips or tears, you are still making affordable, fast fashion and your customers will come back to buy more. 

Why is Fast Fashion Bad?

It’s probably not very helpful to view things as good versus bad. Fast fashion has worked for us for a long time. When fast fashion first appeared, people suddenly had access to different looks and styles that they had only ever seen in glossy magazines. Fashion used to be something that only wealthy and influential people had access to. With fast fashion, the playing field was a bit more levelled, and the average person had more options to add to their wardrobe than ever before without needing to break the bank. 

The main problem is that we have started to notice that there are some ‘not so desirable things’ that come along with the fast fashion model. At a time when the excesses of our society have led to some pretty serious issues, it is good to acknowledge the flaws in the fast fashion model before it’s too late. 

Below are some of the issues related to fast fashion. 

Co2 Emissions

We are living in a time where Co2 emissions and carbon footprints are talked about as commonly as the weather. I mean, they do actually have an effect on the amount it rains, the temperature and what kind of environment we will leave behind for our kids.

The fashion industry is responsible for around 10% of the total global carbon emissions. This might not sound like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, this number is huge. This number is more than the number of emissions from planes and boats combined. It’s believed that if there isn’t a change, the fashion industry will be responsible for half of the total global carbon emissions by the year 2030. 

Water Pollution

Most people don’t realise this, but the fashion industry is the second largest polluter of drinkable water in the world. The amount of water required to make your favourite pair of jeans is staggering. In fact, if you collected all the water needed to make just one pair of jeans, it could keep an adult human alive for almost a decade. The problem is that by the time the jeans are finished, most of the water is undrinkable and can’t be used. 

As the world’s population keeps growing, access to safe, drinkable water is becoming a massive problem that won’t be going away any time soon and the fast fashion model isn’t really doing anything to curb this issue.  

Unsafe Labour Conditions

As the fast fashion industry has become more industrialised and more competitive, some companies have started to cut corners in an effort to save money. This often means that large portions of the production process are completed in the developing world. In many cases, the working conditions for those involved would be deemed unacceptable in the countries where the clothing is eventually sold. 

Sure, many companies do whatever they can to ensure their subcontractors are treating their staff humanely and not violating any human rights laws, but there’s plenty of room for ‘grey areas, ’ especially in the race to beat the competition to the shop floor. 

Online shopping has only increased the demand for cheap garments at discounted prices, and while this might mean a bargain for you, it could have huge ramifications for the people running the factory where that garment is made. 

Textile Waste

Most of us have been taught since we were young that we should appreciate the things we have because there are plenty of people who are going without. Unfortunately, in the modern age, this saying doesn’t have the same impact, at least when it comes to clothing. 

We have been led to believe that we should send all our unwanted, used clothing to developing countries. How many times have we heard of clothing drives for people in African countries? There’s just one problem with that, Africa doesn’t want your used clothing. 

There has been a switch in recent years as some countries (especially in Africa) have begun to develop their economies. They now have their own textile industries, and their citizens want to support local businesses, so a lot of those clothing donations end up in landfills. 

In fact, textile waste is responsible for 5% of the world’s landfill space every year, and that number is growing exponentially. It’s easy to see why when you can buy a shirt for a ‘fiver’ on any given day of the week. 

No Recycling

At the risk of sounding like the biggest’ Debbie Downer’ in the world, recycling is also something that hasn’t turned out to be what we thought. 

Yes, recycling is a great process and helps to limit a lot of things, but when it comes to clothing, the problem is that large portions of it cannot be recycled at all. This is all because of synthetic fibres. 

You might not realise this, but man-made fibres like nylon and polyester are actually made from plastics, and we all know that plastic is something we can’t seem to get rid of right now, no matter how hard we try. 

As for clothing made from natural fibres, recycling them isn’t the easiest process in the world. Clothes aren’t like paper. You can’t just heat them, add some water and mould them into something new. Once threads have been spun to create a fabric, it will most likely stay in that state (unless you somehow find a way to unravel it all and make usable thread again). 

So, unfortunately, a lot of the clothing we don’t want to wear ends up going nowhere. Most of it sits in landfill forever, and if it’s made of synthetic fibres, forever is way more literal than you might think. 

Expensive for Consumers

So you scored a bargain on those jeans at the Black Friday sales. Congratulations, it’s always great to save a few quid, right? Except it’s entirely possible those jeans you bought will either be out of style or completely unwearable within the next 6 months. 

This will mean that you will then have to go buy another pair of jeans to replace the ones you got on sale, and then the replacement jeans will most likely fall into the same pattern, and by the end of a year and a half, you have paid for three pairs of jeans. I’m not a math genius, but it sounds like that Black Friday sale didn’t save you that much money after all. 

The truth is that fast fashion is inherently designed to not last that long because the brands that are selling it need you to come back and buy more. The savings might seem amazing today, but if you added up all the transactions, you would find you spend an unnecessarily large portion of money on clothing that barely stayed in your wardrobe for one season. 

What We Can Do to Stop Fast Fashion

Stopping the fast fashion train is going to take a lot more than just putting on the metaphorical breaks. It’s an enormous industry that creates jobs for millions (if not billions) of people. 

It seems that the best way to curb some of the damage being done by the fast fashion industry is to make some personal decisions that will eventually let big brands know that in order to keep your loyalty, they will need to make some changes. 

Buy Sustainable

In a world where Google is just a voice control away, it’s never been easier to find out if the shirt you’re about to buy is made sustainably. Choose clothing that is made of natural fibres and is produced with minimal environmental impact. 

Shop Second-Hand

As you’ve already discovered from all the information above, there’s a surplus of clothing in the world looking for an owner. This means that it’s incredibly easy to find an outfit at a thrift store for a fraction of the price that it would cost you in an established fashion chain. 

Shopping second hand is the easiest way to save money while minimising your contributions to landfill and carbon emissions. 

Shop Less

The easiest way to send a message to someone is to hit them in the wallet. When it comes to the environment, many of us feel overwhelmed and think, ‘But I’m just one person, what exactly can I do?’ The simple answer is that you can just stop buying clothing you don’t need. 

Loads of people buy clothing they will never wear or will only wear once simply because it’s cheap or on sale. If more people started shopping smarter, the fast fashion industry would start to notice that their profits are getting a little smaller. In basic business, there’s a rule of supply and demand, and if the demand dwindles, you have no choice but to slow down or figure out what you need to change about your product to get people to want it again. 

Resell Unused Items

A great way to try to keep clothing out of landfill is to resell garments you no longer need or want. Not only does it help reduce your carbon footprint, but it can also bring a little bit of extra spending money into your household. 

Donate Clothing

If you don’t need clothing that still has life left in it but aren’t really concerned about making money from it, donating it is still a viable option. If you decide to donate clothing, it is important to take into consideration who exactly you are donating it to and what their plan is after you have dropped off your garbage bag of glad rags. 

One thing to take into consideration is to start with local charities. At the local level, the organisation you donate to is more likely to understand the surrounding community. They are more adept at knowing what items people need and when, so it’s less likely your donation will end up in a dump. 

How myTOT Supports the Fight Against Fast Fashion

When it comes to fast fashion, one of the biggest contributors to the negative impacts it has on the environment is the children’s clothing industry. Kids’ clothing will often only be worn a few times before it is discarded, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Children grow fast, and keeping them clothed can be expensive, but myTOT was created to help ease that financial burden, reduce environmental impact, and maybe even make you some extra cash. 

myTOT is a parent-powered app that gives you access to a marketplace of people just like you who want to save money but also care about the environment. Creating an account is easy, and once you get started, you can buy and sell kids’ clothing and products easily. 

myTOT is all about building a community of like-minded, environmentally-conscious parents who can also make a few quid on the side. To find out more, create an account today. 

Conclusion

The big positive takeaway is that we are living in a time where we now know that there are some problems with fast fashion, and we do actually have the power to fix them. It’s all about making better conscious decisions and thinking about the world we want to leave behind for our children.

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The Top 11 Benefits of Sustainable Second Hand Clothing

Posted on September 22, 2021April 10, 2022 by kirsten
The Top 11 Benefits of Sustainable Second Hand Clothing

Second-hand clothing has been around for as long as most of us can remember. For some of us, the relationship we’ve had with it has changed a lot as we have aged. I think most of us can remember a period of time where the thought of wearing hand-me-downs or second-hand clothing would make us shudder. You remember that time, probably when you were a young teen, and everything you wore needed to have some sort of brand or logo on it. 

As we get older, we start to see the value in pre-loved clothing. Perhaps it helped you to create a look you saw on a runway or made it possible for you to stretch your budget till the next payday.

The advent of technology has made it even more global than it ever was. Searching for a pre-loved bargain can now be done while you’re waiting for your kids to finish playing on the swing set at the park. 

There are a million reasons why sustainable second-hand clothing is an incredible avenue you should continue to explore. But what exactly is sustainable second-hand clothing? Why is it important? What are the top benefits of buying and selling it? Read on to find out all this and more. 

What is Sustainable Second-Hand Clothing?

Sustainable clothing is clothing that minimalises waste, environmental damage and overconsumption of resources in its production. Normally to be considered sustainable, the garment should be made of natural fibres and avoid the use of man-made fibres like polyester. The reason for this is that they are plastics and therefore take a long time to break down. 

Although man-made fibres aren’t considered sustainable when a product is brand new, they do enter the sustainable category when they are second hand. The reason for this is that it’s much better for the environment to keep garments out of landfill for as long as possible. 

To put it simply, sustainable second-hand clothing is clothing that has been pre-owned, but the intention is to find a new wearer for it rather than throwing it away. This can be through wearing it as is, repairing it, or even repurposing it into something completely different. 

Why is Sustainable Second-Hand Clothing Important?

In today’s world, the environment and natural resources are a topic that is often centre stage. You only need to open Instagram or Facebook to see that the topic of sustainability isn’t just reserved for environmental scientists. 

How is this related to fashion? Well, the fashion industry is partially responsible for a lot of the problems the environment is experiencing today. This is all because of the fast fashion model. Fast fashion is most of the clothing we buy on a daily basis. Typically it’s cheap and easy to produce in large volumes. The problem with fast fashion is that it uses loads of resources, creates a lot of pollution, and doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to the rights of its workers. 

In the fight to protect the environment and make sure there’s enough resources leftover for the next generation (our children), wearing sustainable second-hand clothing is an important step we can all make towards a better future. 

The Top 11 Benefits of Sustainable Second Hand Clothing

So now you know the basics, it’s time to look more in-depth at the reasons why you should consider getting into sustainable second-hand clothing. Have a look at the top 11 benefits below. 

Eco-Friendly Shopping

When it comes to doing our part to help stop the effects of climate change and environmental damage, it really is a case of ‘every little bit helps.’

This can be things like taking your own reusable bag to the store, not buying things that are excessively wrapped in plastic, choosing products that are fair trade, using public transport more. 

The thing about being an eco-friendly shopper is that you can go as far with it as you like and know that you’re still making a difference. Wearing sustainable second-hand clothing is another super-easy way to limit the environmental impact you’re having when you shop. 

There’s also a number of ways you can participate in the second-hand clothing market online, which eliminates even more negative environmental factors. 

Minimises Textile Waste

Textile and clothing waste is a big issue at the moment. Each year in the UK, 350,000 tonnes of used clothing that is still wearable is sent to landfill. The amount of wearable clothing that is just discarded each year weighs almost as much as the Empire State Building. 

This figure is an estimate and from just one country, imagine how much the global figure is? 

Every time you participate in sustainable second-hand clothing, you’re prolonging the time until a piece of clothing becomes waste. Most quality garments that are bought second-hand still have another decade or two of life left in them. 

Recycling

We all know that recycling is good for the environment, and we’ve learned that it should start in the home. The recycling of clothing also has some unexpected follow on effects. The earlier we learn about the importance of recycling, the more likely we will do it later in life. The same can be said with clothing; children who grow up wearing second-hand clothing are much more likely to continue doing so as adults. 

Recycling clothing also helps those in different socioeconomic levels to have access to certain fashion items that would normally be out of reach.

Saves Consumers Money

Most of us already know that you can save loads of money if you shop for second-hand clothing instead of aiming for stuff off the rack in your local high street. There’s almost no clothing item on the planet that gets more expensive after it’s become second-hand (with the exception of the Hermés Birkin Bag). 

The cost-saving can also go a long way, especially for families. New parents can be expected to pay anywhere from £600- £1000 per year on their baby’s clothing. In the first 4 years of life, they’ve already sunk thousands of pounds into clothing they probably only got a few wears out of before they had to move onto a new size. 

If you switched out just some of those brand new items for second-hand ones that are of equal quality, you could literally be saving thousands by the time your kid is a teenager. 

Earn an Extra Income

Throughout lockdown, many people started projects like massive decluttering. They took on the old Marie Kondo craze and found a whole heap of things that no longer sparked joy and also discovered that they could turn these things into cash.

The emphasis on sustainability has led to the development of circular economies in many parts of the world. A circular economy is where communities or societies aim to be less wasteful and try to consume in a more circular fashion. 

An unexpected side effect of the circular economy is a booming second-hand clothing market. People have become savvier when it comes to buying outfits for themselves and their families. They now know that there’s loads of perfectly good clothing sitting in people’s wardrobes and are happy to pay for it. 

Technology has also made this incredibly easy, but more on that later. 

The second-hand clothing market is thriving so well that it’s expected to overtake the fast fashion market in the next decade in terms of revenue. So it appears there could be hidden pounds hiding in the back of your closet. 

Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions

When we think of greenhouse gas emissions, we tend to think about oil refineries, aviation and the motor industry, but there’s another industry that is just as responsible but is often left out. 

The fashion industry is a pretty significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Each year about 10% of the total global emissions can be attributed specifically to the fashion industry.

To give you an example of just what that all means, to make just one white cotton t-shirt, you need to produce the same amount of greenhouse gases as you would if you drove a petrol car for 35 miles. 

If you bought that t-shirt second-hand, it would almost be as though a car drove for 35 miles and then never needed to drive again for another decade.  

Saves Water

The production of new clothes uses a tonne of water. To give you an example, the amount of water used to make a single pair of jeans is enough to sustain a person for almost 9 years. If those jeans are worn a couple of times and then thrown out, that’s an incredible waste of valuable finite resources. 

You might be thinking that there’s no big problem with that because the water can just be reused, but that’s not the case. Most of the water used in clothing manufacturing ends up being toxic, so it’s definitely not safe to drink at all. 

When you wear second-hand clothing, you are extending the lifetime of the garment. This, in turn, might mean that one less pair of jeans is made, meaning more drinking water for people who need it. 

Old Trends Come Back Into Fashion

It’s been known for a while now that fashion works in cycles. Things trend for a while, then they disappear, and quite often, they will pop up again in a new generation. 

We’ve seen this many times in the past; remember when bell-bottom jeans made a comeback in the early 2000s, it was a whole 70s motif. A more current example of this can be seen in Gen Z, especially on social media apps like TikTok. The current trend is high wasted, straight leg jeans. This look has almost been completely transposed from the mid-90s. 

Where is the best place to get these ‘on trend’ items of clothing? You guessed it, sustainable second-hand clothing. 

Promotes Sustainable Fashion

Another reason to participate in the second-hand clothing market is that it will help to promote the idea of sustainable fashion. 

Psychologically, we are less free-willed than we like to think. A lot of the habits we form throughout our lives are influenced by our friends or family. This can be for the better or for the worse, depending on what the habit is.

We’ve all given up things or taken up things throughout our lives, and when we think about it, the people we were around had a lot to do with it. The same can be said about our attitudes towards things like the environment or sustainable fashion. 

Simply by wearing clothing that’s second-hand, you will already be helping to promote the idea of sustainable fashion within your own social circle. This can then have a knock-on effect to other social circles. You might not think that you can do much as just one person, but you really can.  

Reduces Fast Fashion Demand

So we know that fast fashion might have been convenient to us for a long time, but the harm it causes isn’t really worth being able to get a t-shirt in a bargain bin at Primark. 

One of the biggest principles of business is the concept of supply and demand. If customers demand something, you supply it to them; if the demand goes up, you produce more of what you can supply. This is what has made the fast fashion model succeed for so long. 

The easiest way to combat this is to simply participate in slow fashion even more. As demand for fast fashion decreases, the brands behind it will need to produce less, and if they’re smart, they will also alter their practices to be more in line with the slow fashion model. 

Supporting Your Local Community

Participating in the second-hand clothing market is a great way to support your local community. It’s great that we can now operate in an incredibly global way, but there are still some amazing benefits to thinking locally. 

When you support your local community, you’re putting money back into the local economy, which always leads to benefits for everyone involved. Studies have shown that for every £100 pounds you spend at a local business, roughly £68 will stay in the community. 

Buying locally can also lead to some incredible support networks, especially if you are new to the area or are in a new phase of life, like being a parent for the first time. 

How Can You Support Sustainable Second-Hand Clothing?

The sustainable second-hand clothing market is a place full of benefits just waiting for you to get involved, and if you’re a parent, one of the easiest ways is to join myTOT. 

myTOT is a free app that’s home to a powerful marketplace powered by mums and dads just like you who want to buy and sell quality children’s second-hand goods. 

It’s simple to get started; you just download the app, create an account and either upload items to sell or search for things you might be looking for. It’s an incredibly easy way to save money, be more sustainable and maybe even make some cash from the items your little ones don’t need anymore. 

If all this sounds great and you want to know more, click here to find out exactly how myTOT works. 

Conclusion

For a long time, fast fashion has dominated the clothing market, and with it, the environment and a lot of workers have paid a hefty price. Thankfully with things like the sustainable fashion movement and the introduction of slow fashion, people are starting to realise that we need to be more proactive if we want this beautiful planet of ours to remain beautiful. 

There are many ways to be proactive, and participating in the second-hand clothing market is not only beneficial to the environment but can also be incredibly fun. So have a look for some second-hand bargains, you won’t regret it. 

Posted in Second-Hand Clothes, Sustainable FashionLeave a Comment on The Top 11 Benefits of Sustainable Second Hand Clothing

What You Need to Know About the Children’s Second-Hand Clothes Market.

Posted on September 8, 2021April 22, 2022 by kirsten
What You Need to Know About the Children’s Second-Hand Clothes Market.

Most people would agree that we’re living in a society that tends to throw things away long before they’re unusable. Each year tonnes and tonnes of clothing goes to landfill, That’s over 11 million items of clothing in the UK alone. To put that in perspective, this much clothing could fill almost 460 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Most of this clothing had nothing wrong with it; it just simply didn’t find a new owner.

We live in a time where it’s normal to just throw things away; one of the biggest culprits of this is children’s clothing. Of all the categories of clothes, kids clothing is the one that tends to have the least amount of wear before it gets discarded. This is a completely normal response; we buy outfits for our kids, they grow out of them, and we throw them away. 

There is, however, a growing movement that is about trying to be a bit more sustainable, saving money and even making a few extra quid on the side, and that is the children’s second-hand clothing market. 

So what is it all about? How does it work? How can you get involved? Read on to find out all this and more.

Why is it Important to Consider Second-Hand Clothing For Kids?

There are a number of reasons why it’s important to consider dealing with the kids’ second-hand clothing market. They range across a broad range of things, from environmental factors to saving money and even making a bit of extra cash.

Supporting Sustainability

Sustainability is something a lot of us are thinking about at the moment, especially if we have kids. We want our children to inherit an earth that is safe and full of all the things that we’ve been able to experience from our childhoods till now. Not a lot of people realise this, but the fashion industry is one of the most polluting and resource-demanding industries on the planet. 

The clothing industry is the second-largest polluter of water sources in the world. The process of dying or waterproofing a lot of fabrics requires many nasty chemicals. A lot of the manufacturing plants where this takes place are in the developing world where environmental laws can be loose or not obeyed at all. This leads to the polluting of freshwater sources. 

Another thing to think about is the farming of plants we need to make natural fibres. We all want to avoid certain synthetic materials in childrens’ clothing because of fire safety, but the amount of time, energy and resources required to grow a plant like cotton until it can yield enough to be used is massive.

Many cotton producers in the US are starting to find it difficult to keep up with demand, and there could be shortages in the future.

Taking advantage of the second-hand clothing market releases some of the pressure on the environment and resources. 

Saving Money

We all know kids are expensive; it’s the reason why they are seen as the ultimate sacrifice. They’re rewarding, but from the moment they enter our lives, they cost money. There’s food, nappies, childcare, education; when they get older, there’s extra-curricular activities and the occasional window repair from cricket practice in the backyard. 

One cost many new parents don’t really think about is clothing. Recent studies have shown that parents can expect to spend between £35 and £40 per month for the first year just on clothing. This is based on moderate buying, but we all know people who have spent that much on a single outfit for their baby. So combine regular monthly clothing with the unpredictable nature of growth spurts and the need to get a special outfit for things like birthdays and christenings, and the amount you’re spending each year could easily reach the thousands.

If you could only spend a fraction of that but still have the same amount of wardrobe options available to you, you probably would. This is exactly what the second-hand clothing market does. You get more for less, and at the end of the day, it’s the small savings that help you get ahead.

Earning a Little Extra

It’s incredibly exciting to watch our kids grow. We see them go from being a tiny little thing to this toddler that seems indestructible, and before you know it, they’re 13 and way too cool to be hanging out with mum or dad. 

There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you see that your little one has outgrown an outfit. There’s a tingle of excitement that they’ve passed another milestone, but then there’s also the thought of ‘Oh, that’s a shame, I really liked that outfit.’ 

In the past, we would normally hand it down to someone we know, but fewer and fewer people do this anymore because there’s so much clothing available to them all the time. The other option is to donate it to a charity shop, but even they are having a hard time finding new homes for donated clothing.

The thing most people don’t realise is that there’s a market out there for second-hand children’s clothing. Each outfit that has been outgrown could be earning you a few extra pounds in the pocket for a rainy day. 

Promoting Slow Fashion For Kids (SLOF)

Before getting into this one, it’s important to explain the difference between slow fashion and fast fashion. Fast fashion is basically the clothing most of us have in our wardrobes and drawers. It’s clothing that was produced cheaply and quickly. If you walk up and down any high street, you will see loads of fast fashion. 

Fast fashion works fine for a lot of people, but in the past two decades, there has been a growing movement of people within the fashion industry that noticed some problems with this particular method. 

You see, fast fashion isn’t very environmentally conscious, it doesn’t have a great reputation for treating workers very well, and it also doesn’t last very long. This is where the idea of slow fashion comes in. 

The main principles behind slow fashion are that clothing is made ethically, sustainably and eliminates as much waste as possible. One part of this is finding ways to extend the life of clothing. 

Childrens’ clothing tends to actually last a lot longer than adult clothes; we just don’t see it because they grow out of it too quickly. Kids garments are normally made from natural fibres and produced to a high quality. As parents, we also tend to take better care of our kids’ clothing than we do our own because we want it to last a long time. By finding new homes for your kids’ clothes, you will be participating in slow fashion in the easiest way.

Reusing and Recycling

We all know that recycling is important, but you might not realise the immensely positive impact of recycling clothing. The truth is that by simply finding new homes for your children’s clothes when they grow out of them, you’re helping to lower some pretty terrifying numbers.

Recycling clothing reduces greenhouse emissions, cuts down on landfill, uses less energy and resources, helps people in different socio-economic groups to get ahead, reduces consumption and many more benefits.  

Building Communities

Having a support network around you is incredibly important, especially when you’re a new parent. The incredibly unique task of raising another human being is rewarding, but at times it can also be terrifying and leave us feeling isolated. 

It’s great to have people like our own parents reassure us that they went through exactly the same stuff with us, but there’s an added feeling of comfort when you know someone is going through similar things to you right now. 

We’ve also seen in the past two years that the need for online communities has skyrocketed since so many of us haven’t been allowed to see each other in person. 

Entering the children’s second-hand clothing market will instantly connect you with thousands of other parents who are experiencing exactly the same things as you. You’d be surprised how much you can get from a brief interaction with someone in the same situation as you, and who knows, you might also make a great friend. I mean, it’s no stranger than becoming besties with someone who you only met through your kid’s preschool.

The Rise of Second-Hand Children’s Clothing

The second-hand clothing market is booming. In the past decade, people have started to get smarter when it comes to making any kind of purchase. Most of us shop around for a while to find the absolute best price of things. Also, fast fashion cycles and a shift towards thinking on a more global scale has lead to a thriving second-hand clothing market. 

The second-hand clothing market is currently worth £18bn, and a recent study has shown that it’s probably going to become one and a half times the size of the fast fashion market in the next decade.

It’s not just limited to online websites and apps either; even Selfridges has started selling pre-loved children’s clothing. If you’re after some Gucci or Burberry swag for your kid’s closet, you can now pick it up and some pretty cheap prices. 

Now is the perfect time to jump into the expanding pool of children’s second-hand clothing; the water is perfect. 

What is the Future of the Children’s Resale Market?

You could say that the era of Antiques Roadshow has led to a more resale savvy population. More and more people look around their homes when doing a spring clean and think about what kind of money they can make from something before they consider putting it in the bin. 

The internet has led to some incredible business opportunities for people and some great ways to make a little extra money on the side, and it appears that the children’s second-hand clothing market is only going to expand as we get even more technologically advanced. 

How Can You Earn a Little Extra?

So now that you’ve probably raided your kid’s dresser drawers and found a lot of outfits that you no longer need, you’re probably wondering how to turn these glad rags into cash. Well, we have you covered. 

myTOT is a mobile marketplace that was designed specifically with people like you in mind to find clothing and kid’s products at the best prices and to make some extra money from selling the stuff you already have. To get started, it’s pretty easy.  

Create a myTOT Account

To start, you just need to download the myTOT App from your preferred app store and create an account. myTOT have incorporated technology into the app, to tailor the news feed to you! Helping you find products that you are interested in.

Build Your Shop

Once you’ve set up your profile, you can build your store by adding items to it. Don’t forget the more information you can give, the better chance you have of selling it quickly. Think about things like quantity, price, quality and shipping. 

Great photos help sell the products, so make sure you take them under good lighting and try to make sure your image gives the most honest representation of your item.

Engage Other Users

You can follow other users or stores on the app. Perhaps you have a favourite seller, or even just want to support another local. 

Just like you would on many other marketplaces, make sure you pay attention to notifications. If someone asks a question about your product, try to answer them as quickly as possible.

Promote Your Products

Feel free to use your own social networks to share the items you have for sale. You never know which ‘friends of friends might be interested and taking some of them off your hands.

What Clothes Are Most Sought After in the Children’s Second-Hand Market?

At the moment, there is a real demand for designer and bespoke children’s second-hand clothing. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on one of these items, it will be gladly taken off you for a reasonable price in a flash. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, quality basics like baby grows, t-shirts and sleepwear are also incredibly popular. 

There’s also a market for ensembles and costumes for special occasions. Perhaps your little one went to a wedding and grew out of that adorable suit two weeks later; there’s someone online who has a wedding to go to next week who would love that suit.

Where Can I Buy Children’s Second-Hand Clothing?

You can also buy clothing on the myTOT app. You don’t even have to be selling anything to buy, and plenty of people log on just to see what deals are hanging around. After a little while, myTOT will even personalise your shopping experience for you. If you have preferences, the myTOT technology will figure it out and make sure you don’t miss any incredible deals. 

How myTOT Supports the Second-Hand Children’s Clothes Market

myTOT is all about putting the power into the hands of mums and dads. You could say that the app is ‘Parent Powered.’ myTOT aims to make the second-hand children’s clothing market more accessible, meaning even more people can participate in slow fashion, save money and help to participate in a more sustainable fashion model. 

Conclusion

New movements are seeing a possible reduction in a throwaway culture, and it’s the perfect time to get involved in the kids second-hand clothing market. Not only will you be saving money (and possibly making a bit of extra cash), you will also be confident that you’re doing whatever you can to ensure your children will have a prosperous planet to live in.

Posted in Second-Hand Clothes, Sustainable FashionLeave a Comment on What You Need to Know About the Children’s Second-Hand Clothes Market.

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