The Tamesis
Rough continued that it is difficult enough for second-hand platforms in the Northern Hemisphere to be profitable on second-hand due to the high costs of running an online resale business. Similar barriers to entry exist for brands looking to enter the second-hand category.
The recycling services offered by ACS vary by brand but can include anything from cleaning to repair and remanufacturing. “There’s a price to pay,” Love said. “Our team has to sort through the boxes, grade the garments based on condition, clean and repair each garment, photograph it, store it, package it and mail it. There are a lot of steps involved, and it’s still all done by hand.” Generally speaking, Raff explains, garments can be resold for about half their original retail price. Taking into account all the work involved in recycling, the absolute minimum retail price required to make units economically viable for resale is around £40. But this is really “breaking the bones”. If ACS wants to make a decent profit on an item, ideally the retail price should be closer to £100 or more, excluding most fast fashion.
Meanwhile, in the Cantamento market, retailers’ profit margins are expected to fall significantly, despite offering similar services. In January 2025, after devastating fires razed much of Cantamento Market, the Or Foundation completed a census, the results of which will be announced soon. Ricketts said one of the early findings is that bale prices have increased since the fires, suggesting that most retailers buying bales from northern hemisphere countries need to charge at least $3 per item to break even. But increasingly, even if retailers pay a premium for higher-quality bundles, the percentage of preferred items is so low that most sellers need to price closer to $5 per preferred item to make up the difference. That’s a huge stretch in one of Africa’s most expensive cities, where the minimum wage is as low as $2 a day.
“This obviously creates huge challenges for retailers, which is why we’re asking charities and resale platforms across the North to disclose their operating costs per garment,” she added. Ricketts hopes to start a global conversation around the costs of operating the second-hand market, thereby fostering unity and demonstrating the value that ecosystems like Kantamanto add to second-hand clothing to recycle as much as possible. Response has been limited so far, and those who have disclosed have done so privately.
What to do next?
There are no easy solutions to this problem – as Vaughan puts it, redressing global power imbalances in postcolonial trade routes is “far beyond” the remit of most fashion companies, and it’s not as simple as stemming the flow of second-hand goods, since these ecosystems rely on imports for their business.
Some Cantamento Market sellers say the best solution for those in the Northern Hemisphere who want to declutter is to send low-quality goods directly to local landfills rather than passing the problem onto the Southern Hemisphere, while donating higher-quality goods rather than selling them so businesses further down the chain have the opportunity to get priority. Others have suggested changes to the forthcoming Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation so that funds collected from producers can be reallocated to countries that are truly tackling the fashion waste crisis, but this is still a long way off.
“This will require significant investment in infrastructure and finding alternative ways for retailers to sell products to recyclers or find new markets for upcycled products so they can make a living,” Ricketts said. “Whatever the solutions look like, we need solidarity between the North and the South. We need companies in the North not to operate in fear, but to accept the reality that everyone in this industry faces: the abundance of low-quality clothing.”
