Why Reklaim, a pre-owned luxury dealer, is stepping up its partnerships with independent jewelers
Reklaim, a pre-owned dealer of luxury handbags and watches, is looking to form more independent retail partnerships as a pathway to growth.
The company is naming Peter Englehart its vp of business development and sales. Englehart previously served as group director at Tiffany & Co. and director of business development and sales at Atelier Swarovski. Englehart’s job at Reklaim will be to expand the company’s footprint through shop-in-shops and other deals with retailers, especially best-in-class, independent jewelry stores, he told Modern Retail in an interview. Many of Reklaim’s existing shop-in-shops are with larger department stores, including Nordstrom and Selfridges.
Englehart’s appointment comes at a time in which Reklaim — which was founded in 2022 — is looking to grow its wholesale presence. Reklaim has shop-in-shops in some 100 locations worldwide, including at Jared and duty-free stores in Dubai International Airport. In April, it began selling directly to consumers through its website. But physical retail is still “the driving objective” for the company, Reklaim’s president, Gary Schoenfeld, told Modern Retail.
“Consumers want to get to know Reklaim better, so having that digital offering is important,” Schoenfeld said. “The convenience of that is something we’re obviously excited about. But, first and foremost, for us, what’s important is to lead that in-person experience.”
Reklaim, which says it’s backed by a “proprietary AI-powered procurement platform,” sources handbags and watches from various suppliers around the world. The products are “not gray market,” Englehart said. “All of these are truly pre-owned; they are not watches that have moved around because of retailers trying to right-size their inventory.”
Reklaim says it has access to $10 billion in inventory from brands including Rolex, Hermès and Louis Vuitton. It procures specific pieces for its retail partners and their customers based on their requests for certain models, makes and colorways. Reklaim declined to provide revenue statistics, but Schoenfeld said “the receptivity around the world has been super exciting.”
Reklaim aims to make it easier for people to get their hands on luxury items. “With traditional retail, when you’re working with any brand, you’re working within the constraints of what their supply is,” Englehart said. “They only make so many of a certain model per year, and they have to distribute those carefully. … We’re asking retailers, ‘What could you sell if you had it?'”
Reklaim says this system not only boosts sales for its retail partners, but it also helps their customers. “You go into authorized dealers for many of these different brands, and they won’t sell you what you want that day; it’s often a wait list of two to four years,” Schoenfeld said. “The whole name of Reklaim is for retailers and consumers to reclaim the power — that if you want to buy a luxury watch or handbag, you ought to be able to walk into a retailer of your choice and buy the product you want.”
Compared to a decade ago, there are more avenues today for shoppers to buy secondhand luxury, including The RealReal, StockX and Fashionphile. Luxury reseller Rebag teamed up with Walmart in January and, earlier this month, Amazon.
According to Bain & Company, the market for global secondhand luxury goods totaled an estimated €48 billion ($55.4 billion) in 2024, up about 7% year over year. Still, luxury, as a whole, stands to slow down this year, thanks to economic uncertainty and “its biggest potential setbacks for at least 15 years,” per another Bain report.
When it comes to secondhand luxury, for Reklaim, “I do think there is something here; there is a market for this,” said Chris D’Alessandro, executive director of the marketing and sales agency VML. He does have questions about the philosophy of democratizing luxury — “it seems like an oxymoron,” he said — but he added that he’s intrigued by Reklaim’s emphasis on in-person sales. “People want to touch and feel and see [a product],” he said. “They want to inspect it themselves, prior to purchasing.”
One challenge, as D’Alessandro sees it, is if a Reklaim retailer doesn’t have a product that a customer wants, right then and there, even though they could work with Reklaim to order one. “Luxury items, they’re an emotional purchase,” D’Alessandro said. “And if you can’t deliver on it now, people are going to find it somewhere else.”
Reklaim, for its part, said, “Whatever assortment the retailer wants, that’s what we go get for them,” Schoenfeld said.
Going forward, at Reklaim, “the focus is establishing a network of authorized Reklaim dealers … and helping the consumer gain access to the products that they ultimately want,” Englehart said. “These pieces were created to be loved for generations and passed down.”